Impact of Video Games, Gamification, and Game-Based Learning on Sustainability Education in Higher Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Introduction

In general, a well-crafted introduction by the author. It's just that the new authors reveal the urgency of research related to Video Games, Gamification, and Game-Based Learning. Gap analysis related to Video Games, Gamification, and Game-Based Learning has not yet appeared. Even the relationship with higher education is also not visible. For this reason, the writer needs to improve this so that the introduction section becomes more substantial and better. In addition, it is necessary to have research objectives and a statement of the urgency of this research.

 

Method

It is necessary to explain the PRISMA methodology so that readers can understand the direction of the research methodologies. The inclusion and exclusion categories used by researchers need an explanation. Why are the samples used limited to the last five years?

 

Discussion

What is the novelty of this research that differentiates it from other studies?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

a professional proofreader is needed to check the language

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you so much for all the suggestions. It has been taken into account and some explanatory comments have also been added in some sections.

Kind regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article presents a systematic review of the state-of-the-art on the impact that the use of game-based and technology-mediated learning can have on sustainable education. The PRISMA methodology was used to select a set of articles in the last 5 years based on various criteria.

The article is well written and easy to read. It is divided into 5 main sections. Initially, it draws the reader's attention to the main topic which is the purpose of the article. Section 2 describes the research methodology, which research questions the work intends to describe and how the articles were selected. In section 3, the works that met the pre-established inclusion criteria are analyzed, with the aim of answering the 8 research questions.

Section 4 discusses some of the evidence found in the previous section and identifies flaws in some of the papers reviewed. The article ends with the conclusions.

 

Strengths:

  - Two current themes that can influence younger generations

  - Use of a methodology adopted by the scientific community

  - Content analysis of a set of articles

 

Weaknesses:

  - No review of the state of the art is made

  - The authors do not indicate the weak points of this work

  - Study with few bibliographical references.

  - In the search process for articles, they must indicate in which fields of the articles the queries are applied.

   - Alguns critérios de inclusão/exclusão para a selecção de estudos não são claros Por exemplo o critério CI6 da tabela 4: diz “CI6: Published in an impact journal.” No entanto, mais à frente encontramos um estudo que pertence a uma Q4 Journal com JCI de 0.2 e JIF desconhecido.

 

There is no bibliographic reference for the Rayyan tool, line 98.

On line 109 and 110 the authors say that Rayyan excluded 813 articles because they had metadata with little reliability for the software. Is this quantifiable through a parameter? Which parameter? What is the value of threshold?

Table 5 is strange, we have a column with a title and no data.

In Table 6 one of the headings of a column is in Spanish and English.

The penultimate row of Table 6 is in Spanish.

Table 10 makes use of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations, however no reference is made, not realizing where these 17 SDGs appear.

 

On lines 267 to 275, it should be noted that table 12 intends to respond to RQ5.

 

Reviewing these points could really make that a good paper becomes a great review paper.

The English used in the article is clear and professional, exhibiting a commendable level of clarity. The authors has effectively conveyed their ideas and concepts using concise and well-structured sentences, ensuring that the content is easily comprehensible to a wide range of readers.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you so much for all the suggestions. It has been taken into account and some explanatory comments have also been added in some sections.

Kind regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for submitting your article “Impact of Video Games, Gamification and Game-Based Learning on Sustainability Education in Higher Education” for review and consideration for publication in the Sustainability journal.

The present study conducted a systematic review of the use of video games, gamification, and game-based learning in furthering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the 2030 agenda. This particular topic is highly relevant to the current state of education, as technology continues to play an increasingly important role the in teaching and learning process. Although these instructional technologies have been repeatedly covered in the literature, emphasis on sustainability education may provide valuable insight into this specialized area of study. Therefore, the authors would do well if they elaborate more on SDG and why it is an important area for both research and education.

The introduction provides an acceptable overview of the concepts and I particularly appreciate the authors differentiating the instructional technologies. Nevertheless, I failed to see why a systematic review of this topic is needed and what it could possibly contribute to the body of knowledge. The authors may add this to the introduction.

Most of the mapping and research questions denote the necessity for a bibliometric analysis more than a systematic review. The research questions used in systematic reviews are typically broad and focused on identifying the effectiveness of interventions or the relationship between specific variables. On the other hand, the research questions used in bibliometric analyses are more focused on the nature of scientific output in a given field or discipline. (See this bibliometric analysis for example https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-023-09651-y). In this regard, the authors must identify the most appropriate research methodology and revise accordingly.

The lack of a literature review is a major weakness of this research paper. The introduction section does not provide a review of existing literature on the topic, which is an important step in any research study. Without a literature review, readers cannot assess how the research fits into the existing body of knowledge on the topic, and the research findings may lack context and significance.

"Higher Education" was used in the title yet in the keywords used for review, the authors included terms such as "K-12, kindergarten, primary school, elementary education, middle school, and high school". It is important to ensure that the title and keywords accurately reflect the content of the article. In this case, if your article focuses primarily on higher education, it would be more appropriate to include keywords that are specifically related to this area, such as "university education, college education, graduate studies" and so on. Alternatively, if your article discusses education at all levels, it may be beneficial to revise the title to better reflect this broader scope. 

The authors included Taylor & Francis as one of the "scientific-educational databases". I believe it is a publishing company and not an indexing database. On the other hand, PubMed is a search engine most commonly known for health-related literature. Nevertheless, the authors must justify why they selected each of these sources. On the same note, they must identify how many articles they initially acquire per source, and what search strategies they employed for each database.

The authors may need to explain some of the inclusion criteria:

How can you determine whether a particular document is a "primary research article" (CI3)?

Why publications  "between 2019 and 2023" (CI4) were only considered? What is an "impact journal" (CI6)?

What if I have an institutional subscription that allows me to "access the full publication" (CI7) and you do not have it?

Why consider papers only "contextualized in Europe" (CI8)? 

Both inclusion and exclusion criteria have "contextualized in Europe" (CI8 and CE3).

Items in the exclusion criteria are simply the opposite of the inclusion criteria.

Given these inconsistencies, the authors MUST revisit the data collection and analysis.

Some of the questions stated in the introduction were either not or directly answered in the results section. For instance, it is unknown who are the most prominent authors in this field. 

The discussion section appears to be more bibliometric analysis than a systematic review. Please see previous comment about this flaw. In addition, the discussion section was not contextualized in the literature. It is unclear what is the contribution of this study.

 

 

There are obvious langauge and grammatical mistakes throughout the manuscript. Example: "MQ1: What are the most prominent authors in this field?". Proofreading and language editing is a MUST.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you so much for all the suggestions. It has been taken into account and some explanatory comments have also been added in some sections.

Kind regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx