Gamification as a Teaching Method to Improve Performance and Motivation in Tertiary Education during COVID-19: A Research Study from Mexico
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please see attached comments.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper intends to present a study related with the implementation of gamification as a teaching methodology to improve performance and motivation in tertiary education, during COVID-19.
The structure of the Abstract is not the more adequate to explain the conducted study. It has some unnecessary details such as the number of students who participated in the study, the software used to data analysis, an interview conducted with four students. The main results obtained should be presented in a more global context.
Correct some typos. E.g. line 5 the word "en-gagement"; line 6 has a space before the "Traditionally" word.
The Introduction section is adequate (the lines 29-31 have a larger text font than the rest of the paper).
In the Context section it is indicated that the study is based on the model proposed by Rincon-Flores and Santos-Guevara. However, the choice of this model is not well justified and no comparative analysis with other existing gamification models is presented.
In the Methodology section, the main research question (lines 133-134) should be presented as a question rather than an intention.
The Results section is sufficiently detailed. However, is necessary to correct some typos in the text (e.g. Iin thii section maiin findings...).
The discussion and conclusion sections should address the three research questions indicated in the methodology section and should carry out a comparative analysis with other studies present in the bibliography.
It's still an interesting study in an area with with great potential for application in other higher education institutions.
The bibliographic references are adequate.
It is necessary some editing of the English language.
Author Response
Please, see the word file attached
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript is focused on the problematic of gamification with the focus on the Mexico country. As authors wrote, this is very actual problematic, not only at universities among researchers abut also among teachers, parents and also all society. The text is written in understandable form, the data are adequately evaluated. I have got comments of minor character, their incorporation to the text should be easy.
- Please replace research aims and research questions from the methodology part to the end of theoretical background.
- The methodology chapters should be divided into subchapters typical for this chapter – Respondents, Research tool and Data Analysis.
The part of the text regarding to Research tool is too brief. Please add information about the number of items, about the origin of questionnaire, add reliability and validity of questionnaire.
Please add information to the Data Analysis, why you choose Mann-Whitney test.
- Please replace the information about Respondents into the Methodology from the Results.
- Please add values of Mann-Whitney test into Table 5.
- Please use passive in whole text and also the text includes typographical errors, different fronts of letters. Please revise it.
I hope my comments are helpful.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The topic raised in the framework of the research for which the paper entitled "Gamification as a teaching method to improve performance 2
and motivation in tertiary education during COVID-19: A re- 3
search study from Mexico" was sent is relevant and important. In my opinion, journal Education Sciences is thematically consistent with the content of the submitted paper and the study can be considered for publication after minor / major adjustments.
In the Context section, the types of badges and how to get them are described. However, it is not clear to me how the scoring was established on this basis, who leads in the ranking and what was the relationship between the badges won and the students' final marks. A detailed case study would be helpful for other researchers to introduce and validate a similar gamification model. The description would also be good for teachers to apply to their group. It is also not clear to me why in figures 2a and 2b all the badges are presented in the first line. Additionally, in the pictures some information is in Spanish and it is not clear why some badges are bigger than others.
In the Methodology section, there are 3 places where research questions are presented. First, line 132 (main research question), then line 139 presents the purpose of the study, and then lines 145-152 presents 3 research questions. This form can be confusing, and difficult to understand. How many research questions are in the study and what are questions finally?
In the Results section, on the "Badge preference per course" chart, it is not clear whether these are the preferences of students: which badges they would like to get (because they are easy to get, because they like the layout, because they give a lot of points) or whether this chart shows the number of badges of a given type awarded as part of the course. Of course, below the chart is an explanation along with examples of qualitative survey responses, but a short explanation could be placed before the chart on line 182-184.
Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in the study. In my opinion, this scope of the analyzed material can be considered for two different publications. The presented fragment of the interviews is small, the publication describes to a greater extent the quantitative results. Perhaps there was not enough space to describe in detail both results of this interesting topic.
Other comments:
- on line 42 the author writes "In this study, Thomas and Rogers suggest ..." while previously citing Malik M's source, Javed S. which can be confusing.
- on line 171 there are some misspelledes: "Iin thii section maiin findings are presented"
Author Response
Please, see the word file attached
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The suggestions for correction have been taken into consideration, although there are still some to be revised:
- Several spaces between words are visible along the document: "education-1495420-peer-review-v2.pdf".
- Some typos need to be corrected. E.g. line 45 the word "regulatioin".
Author Response
Thanks for the notes. The typos are corrected and unnecessary spaces deleted.
Best,
J.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
