**Preface to "Trends on Educational Gamification: Challenges and Learning Opportunities"**

Games are a natural activity—we all know how to play. Perhaps this is the key feature that explains the increase in the use of game-based learning (GBL) strategies: Applying games to education converts education into a universal activity.

Over the last ten years, the way in which education and training is delivered has considerably changed, not only due to a new technologic environment—plenty of social networks, MOOCs, etc.—but also because of the appearance of new methodologies. Such new methodologies are shifting the center of gravity: from the teacher to the student, with the aim of awakening relational aspects, as well as promoting imagination and divergent thinking. One new approach that holds considerable promise for helping to engage learners is, indeed, game-based learning (GBL).

However, while a growing number of institutions are beginning to see the validity of GBL, there are still many challenges to overcome before this type of learning can become widespread. Among these challenges, we find: (i) combining engaging game design with learning objectives and curriculum; (ii) evidencing learning outcomes; (iii) creating a gaming atmosphere that is adapted to all learners'ability; (iv) the specific knowledge required for a proper game design; (v) the cultural barriers with faculty and costs associated with developing a learning game.

In this Special Issue, we want to gather several studies and experiences in GBL to be shared with other teachers and researchers. The topics of this Special Issue will relate to the use of game-based learning strategies at all academic levels:


## **Jos´e Carlos Pi ˜nero Charlo, Mar´ıa Teresa Costado Dios, Enrique Carmona Medeiro, Fernando Lloret** *Editors*

## *Editorial* **Preface for the Special Issue "Trends in Educational Gamification: Challenges and Learning Opportunities"**

**José Carlos Piñero Charlo 1,\*, Nadja Belova 2, Eduardo Quevedo Gutiérrez 3, Alberto Zapatera Llinares 4, Elena Arboleya-García 5, Jakub Swacha 6, Paula López-Serentill <sup>7</sup> and Enrique Carmona-Medeiro <sup>1</sup>**


## **1. Introduction**

Readers of the journal *Education Sciences* probably agree that playing games comes naturally—we all know how to play some game—however, because of the complexity of gaming, it is almost exclusively limited to mammals with regard to all animals: almost 80% of mammals use some sort of game for learning. Specifically with regard to humans, ever since we achieved some degree of civilization, we have played games for its proposed intellectual challenge and its entertainment value. Currently, it is difficult to participate in progressive modern societies without encountering some form of game play. In fact, the commercial video gaming industry now surpasses the movie and music industries in sales around the world, and more money is spent on games than on the other two combined. Therefore, if we consider games to be a natural activity, then applying games to education converts education into a universal activity. This is the key feature behind the use of Game-Based Learning (GBL) strategies.

In this regard, over the last ten years, the way in which education and training is delivered has considerably changed not only due to a new technologic environment—plenty of social networks, MOOCs, etc.—but also because of the appearance of new methodologies. Such new methodologies are shifting the focus from the teacher to the student, with the aims of awakening relational aspects as well as promoting imagination and divergent thinking. One new approach that holds considerable promise in helping engage learners is, indeed, game-based learning (GBL). The interest in research on GBL approaches has been continuously growing in the last decade. Particularly, since 2013, gamification in education has become a vivid and quickly developing area of research, with hundreds of new relevant publications coming out every year [1,2].

Researchers have reported that educational gamification strategies are being successfully applied in a wide variety of academic domains and educational levels, such as in studying English as second Language in higher education [3], in integrating subjects [4] such as mathematics and programming [5], or in working on mathematical and scientific problems [6]. Particularly, the skills and procedures used in certain games [7] have meaningful similarities with those used to solve mathematical problems. On the other hand, GBL

**Citation:** Piñero Charlo, J.C.; Belova, N.; Quevedo Gutiérrez, E.; Zapatera Llinares, A.; Arboleya-García, E.; Swacha, J.; López-Serentill, P.; Carmona-Medeiro, E. Preface for the Special Issue "Trends in Educational Gamification: Challenges and Learning Opportunities". *Educ. Sci.* **2022**, *12*, 179. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/educsci12030179

Received: 22 February 2022 Accepted: 24 February 2022 Published: 4 March 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

is also used to boost relational aspects, such as increasing motivation [8], or to promote engagement with specific topics [9].

Furthermore, game design involves didactic-professional knowledge [10], so its use can deliver profit to both students and teachers and can be used to develop professional skills in future teachers. However, since teachers have a conceptual misunderstanding of gamification and STEAM education, they report insecurity and a lack of training for engaging in such educational methodologies [11]. In this regard, while a growing number of institutions are beginning to see the validity of GBL, many challenges still need to be overcome before this type of learning can become widespread.

This Special Issue of *Education Sciences*, titled "Trends in Educational Gamification: Challenges and Learning Opportunities", was developed to illuminate the inner workings of immersive games. Therefore, the primary aim of this Special Issue was to provide a focus for people working on the abovementioned research frames by providing a platform on which reflections on how to move gamification studies a step forward can be compiled. We invited researchers to submit original research on the deployment of gamified systems embedding novel game elements as well as rigorous quantitative and qualitative user studies that may also explore theoretical reflections grounded in empirical results. We also encouraged the scientific community to submit research covering all academic levels (pre-K12 to university) as well as a variety of games: board games, videogames, and live-action games, among others.

The 11 articles presented in this Special Issue deal with a wide range of aspects in Educational Gamification. We organized the discussions in a comprehensive manner so that each specific contribution can be highlighted. In this regard, as the Lead Editor and coordinator of this Special Issue, I proposed a collaborative structure to write this preface, so that experts can contribute to each of sections. Collaborative writing is a process of producing a written work as a group where all team members contributed to the content and the decisions about how the group will function. Therefore, one of my tasks as the leading editor was to coordinate and communicate with the different team members (the authors of the publications in this Special Issue) and, thus, to assign the redaction of specific sections—fitting each author's expertise—to produce and deliver a proper analysis. Finally, I highlight that the opportunity to coordinate and participate in this Special Issue has served as a great stimulus to revisiting recently conducted works and has given me the chance to work with colleagues with whom I had never conceived of sharing the same floor. I am thankful to all of the contributors of this Special Issue, and I hope to cooperate with them again in the future.

> José Piñero Lead Editor and coordinator of the SI

#### **2. The State-of-the-Art**

#### *Jakub Swacha*

No scientific study should begin without first checking existing knowledge. This becomes challenging in areas undergoing rapid development, such as the one covered by this Special Issue: Educational Gamification, where the sheer amount of publications is overwhelming. In this context, a bibliometric survey is useful as it enables a researcher to consider thousands of publications within a reasonable time. This fast pace comes at a price: such a survey deals only with the most easily accessible data pertaining to each document, so in most cases, it is infeasible to answer detailed research questions. However, it is perfectly capable of answering general questions such as those regarding research topics, active researchers and research institutions, and their interconnections, which is often exactly what we need to grasp what is going on in that field of study.

In the bibliometric survey on Educational Gamification presented in [1], an exclusive approach was followed in an attempt to include only work that was highly relevant to the topic (i.e., preferring false negatives over false positives). At the cost of ignoring some relevant work, this approach allowed for papers of low relevance yet high visibility, such as highly cited papers on gamification or education but not on Educational Gamification, to be avoided and thus to not pollute the results.

As a researcher focused on just a narrow section of Educational Gamification, pertaining to teaching computer programming, I have found the work on the bibliometric survey both revealing and rewarding, especially as some of the results were far from expected. I hope that my paper provides readers with a good picture of the field before they delve into the details presented in the excellent papers forming the rest of this Special Issue.

#### **3. Game Design**

#### *Eduardo Quevedo Gutiérrez and Alberto Zapatera Llinares*

Game design (applied to education) is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game with formative and entertainment purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions in the form of gamification. Academically, game design is part of game studies, while game theory studies strategic decision making (primarily in non-game situations). Games have historically inspired seminal research in the fields of probability, artificial intelligence, economics, and optimization theory. Applying game design to itself is a current research topic in metadesign.

The game design process associated with a computer can extend its purposes to the considered programming language. Using a simple and accessible programming language such as Scratch (proposed in our contribution as a didactic tool to teach functions) favors redesign (in Scratch, this process is known as reinvention). This scheme promotes the Creative Learning Spiral based on five components: *Imagine*, *Create*, *Play*, *Share*, and *Reflect*. Therefore, the authors understand that the integration of computational thinking in the school curriculum, including gamification as a methodology to implement it, promotes creativity and helps students learn the basics of programming languages. In this scope, game design serves as a means to an end. In fact, the approach carried out in our contribution considering the learning of functions through programming with Scratch is a game in and of itself. It allows the student to try different options until a problem solution is reached without fear of making mistakes in the process. This is very interesting since not being able to reach a final solution may involve the student's motivation to continue playing and improving; on the contrary, in the education system, usually mistakes are penalized, which can lead to demotivation. The authors will continue researching this topic to promote student motivation.

#### **4. Live-Action Games: Educational Escape Rooms**

#### *Nadja Belova*

Whoever plays, steps out of everyday experience; in a sense, overrides it; and immerses themselves in a game world. This phenomenon is addressed in the concept of the "flow theory" [10]. Here, the state of "flow" is described as total absorption by a task that is both challenging and enjoyable. Such a totally immersive recent game trend is the so-called escape room. Escape rooms are a relatively new game concept that has been gaining popularity since around 2012 and can be considered a sort of hype in the science education community in the last five years. Educational Escape Rooms are a sort of live-action teambased game where players discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to achieve a specific goal (usually escaping from the room) in a limited amount of time. To gain an overview of the state of science education research on this topic, we conducted a literature review. During the work in this review, subconsciously, the following questions always arose: Is this method really worth the hype? Are such immersive but also very elaborate methods really more effective—in terms of learning outcomes and competence development? As of now, it seems that the answer is that we do not know. We were able to identify not only some gaps in Educational Escape Room development (especially a need for scenarios that are easily adaptable to different educational settings) but also a major research gap when it comes to more empirical evidence on their actual effects. This is the area where research will definitely have to

provide more results in the near future and to systematize the results because not all activities are automatically good even if everyone participates in it.

#### **5. Board Games**

#### *Elena Arboleya-García*

Some educators spotted that board games are under-utilized in education. Games can engage students with different learning styles and can inspire individual creativity. They create non-threatening environments through tangible elements, hands-on tasks, or mutual learning, where lower levels of knowledge and failed tasks can be turned into a meaningful-learning acquisition. However, interdisciplinarity is also needed. It offers students a better understanding of the teaching–learning processes, as they could be able to identify and connect information from the separate subjects of the school curriculum.

Based on these statements, we conceived 'The Game of The Sea' to bring marine environment and ocean knowledge closer to students. From our educative experiences, as students first and educators second, we noticed that, throughout the stages of primary and secondary education, science subjects (in particular, those related to biology) provide education that is not properly connected between each level. Therefore, students are not able to construct long-term memories about this specific topic. The design and implementation of 'The Game of The Sea' entails the creation of a network of knowledge from different levels and from different subjects (not only scientific ones) addressed in the school curriculum. Once this integrative knowledge was acquired, our students obtained a better awareness of marine environment and we could confirm that we contributed to teaching environmentally responsible citizens.

Board games and interdisciplinarity represent the missing tools in our toolboxes, in particular, with regard to secondary education. In contrast with primary education, games are usually not considered a common didactic tool by teachers in secondary education despite games providing the possibility of improving traditional lectures and their relationships with students. The research presented on this Special Issue introduces the background needed to incorporate games into school curricula and to encourage educators to embrace that possibility of adopting these tools.

#### **6. STEAM Education**

#### *Paula López-Serentill*

STEAM Education has recently become a trend in educational development that promotes learning throughout and for the interdisciplinary enterprise between Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math. Teaching relevant, in-demand skills that will prepare students to become innovators in an ever-evolving world is paramount not only for the future of the students themselves but also for the future of the country. STEAM also empowers teachers to employ project-based learning that crosses each of the five disciplines and fosters an inclusive learning environment in which all students can engage and contribute. Within STEAM education, one useful tool is gamification, which is reported as a powerful tool for teachers at all levels in the educational system.

Our results show that a high percentage of math teachers think that this kind of activity has positive effects on students' development, improving their affective domain toward mathematics and required skills for mathematical competency. Notwithstanding, many teachers reported insecurity and a lack of knowledge, which is why we consider it necessary to promote STEAM training and, in particular, the use of gamification as another tool in the mathematics classroom.

#### **7. Conclusions**

During the last decades, we have witnessed the frenetic development of technologies, as well as the expansion and rise in the video game industry, board games, and escape rooms. The possibilities of innovating within the classroom using playful environments with didactic intentions have increased remarkably. The need for teachers to find new

learning scenarios that align with the interests of students has led to the emergence and consolidation of two methodologies in the classroom based on the educational use of games: game-based learning and gamification. Therefore, a question emerges: How can the scientific community help these innovative movements really improve learning in the classroom?

The scientific community is responsible for exploring the educational potential of these new learning environments in depth and for providing empirical evidence on the educational possibilities they present. Although research on the educational use of games has produced results indicating that games can be healthy contributions to all educational areas, their possibilities have not yet been explored in depth. Regardless of the nature of the game (software, applications, video games, programming environments, board games, or escape rooms), more empirical evidence is required to reveal the added value of game-based learning situations compared with other types of learning. In this regard, we believe that more evidence may be of interest in progressing research on the educational use of games: especially studies on how these learning environments affect motivation and involvement, cooperation, creativity, and problem solving; studies on the different possibilities of use, specifically how they promote learning, how to practice and integrate what has been learned, how to problematize a situation, how to evaluate what has been learned, what causes triggering situations, etc.; studies that contribute to the systematization of principles for design and management; and studies on the design of disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning situations that are transferable to different educational levels, contexts, and training situations.

Finally, we believe that this Special Issue provides interesting key points that can help in understanding the effective use of educational games. In this Special Issue, the reader will find a varied and representative sample of current research issues related to the educational use of games from different disciplines, such as mathematics, music, English as second language, and marine biology, among others; to a diverse sample of games such as escape rooms, board games, and the Scratch programming environment; and to different methodological approaches, bibliometrics, bibliographic reviews, ethnographies, exploratory studies, case studies, etc.

> Enrique Carmona Medeiro Guest Editor of the SI

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, supervision, writing-original draft preparation, writingreview and editing, J.C.P.C.; writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing, N.B., E.Q.G., A.Z.L., E.A.-G., J.S., P.L.-S. and E.C.-M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding. Specific information is available on each manuscript that is included on this Special Issue.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data discussed on this manuscript are available on the website of the special issue: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/special\_issues/Trends\_Educational\_ Gamification, accessed on 21 February 2022.

**Acknowledgments:** The leading editor and coordinator of this special issue would like to thank to the research groups HUM462 (Teachers' professional development) and HUM634 (Experimental Educational Psychology Laboratory) as well as to the project "Mathematical cognition and ABN methodology in the 3rd stage of the primary education" (PID2019-105584GB-I00).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


## *Article* **State of Research on Gamification in Education: A Bibliometric Survey**

**Jakub Swacha**

Institute of Management, University of Szczecin, Cukrowa 8, 71-004 Szczecin, Poland; jakub.swacha@usz.edu.pl

**Abstract:** Recent years have brought a rapid growth of scientific output in the area of gamification in education. In this paper, we try to identify its main characteristics using a bibliometric approach. Our preliminary analysis uses Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science as data sources, whereas the main analysis is performed on 2517 records retrieved from Scopus. The results comprise the cross-coverage of databases, geographic distribution of research, forms of publication, addressed research areas and topics, preferred publishing venues, the most involved scientific institutions and researchers, collaboration among researchers, and research impact. The main conclusions underline the sustained growth of the research output in the area for at least seven years, the widespread interest in the area across countries and branches of science, and an effective research communication in the area documented by the number of citations and the map of co-citations.

**Keywords:** gamification; education; literature survey; publication analysis

#### **1. Introduction**

Since gamification rose to popularity in the early 2010s, it has become an object of interest for education researchers. A short but good explanation of this interest was provided by Karl M. Kapp, who not only called gamification "the ideal process for creating engaging learning environments" [1], but also defined it as "using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems" [1], implicitly pointing out its key virtue: the ability to build engagement and motivation.

Consequently, gamification has been applied at various levels of education (from preschool [2], through elementary [3], secondary [4], and higher [5], to adult education [6]), and to various subjects (including as diverse ones as anatomy and physiology [7], architecture [8], computer programming [9], chemistry [10], foreign language [4], mathematics [11], or organizational behavior [12]). Gamification models were designed [13], specialized frameworks developed [14], and dedicated tools implemented [15]. Both success stories [3] and failures [16] were reported.

In 2013, Simone de Sousa Borges et al. retrieved a total of 357 publications querying five bibliographic databases with the keyword "gamification" alone [17]. At the moment of writing these words, Google Scholar alone returns 19,000 results for the very same keyword. With such a flood of new knowledge, it becomes more and more difficult for a researcher to keep track of the state of gamification research even in his/her particular area of interest, such as education. This explains the demand for various kinds of literature surveys, providing a more or less comprehensive picture of the field. Searching for the keyword "literature" within the results of our main query on gamification in education (see Sections 2 and 3), we were able to identify 22 publications in this vein that employed a systematic approach to data collection and covered more than 10 publications. They are listed in Table 1. The Scope column defines the subdomain to which a given study was restricted, the Items column provides the number of publications that were eventually analyzed (after filtering out the ones considered irrelevant), the Databases column lists the data sources used (for the sake of brevity, dataset details were omitted), and the Year

**Citation:** Swacha, J. State of Research on Gamification in Education: A Bibliometric Survey. *Educ. Sci.* **2021**, *11*, 69. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci11020069

Academic Editor: José Carlos Piñero Charlo Received: 31 December 2020 Accepted: 4 February 2021

Published: 10 February 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

column specifies the last year covered in a given survey. The table is sorted upon the number of covered publications.

**Table 1.** Prior literature surveys in the area of gamification in education.


<sup>1</sup> ACM: ACM Digital Library; ASME: ASME Digital Collection; IEEE: IEEE Xplore; Scholar: Google Scholar; Springer: Springer Link; WoS: Web of Science.

> Looking at the contents of Table 1, most of the listed surveys are focused on a specific education level [18,29,34], subject [20,25–27,30,31,33,34,36–38] or reported research type [22,28,32,35], with the remaining ones were either outdated [17,21,23] or using too restricted search criteria [19] and/or selection of sources [24] to achieve an adequate coverage of the state of research on gamification in education. We therefore identify a research gap in the lack of an up-to-date survey of the scientific output in this field, not restricted to its particular subdomain or type of research. The aim of this research is to satisfy this gap. Although we put our priority on wide coverage rather than deep coverage of the problem area, we consider our work as both a continuation and extension of the prior works listed in Table 1.

Considering the aim of the research, we state the following research questions:

RQ1. How has the scientific output with regard to gamification in education developed over time?

RQ2. Which countries contribute the most to the scientific output with regard to gamification in education?

RQ3. What publication types are mostly used to convey new research results with regard to gamification in education?

RQ4. In the context of which research areas and topics are the problems of gamification in education addressed?

RQ5. What are the publishing venues through which the results of gamification in education research are most often disseminated?

RQ6. Which scientific institutions are involved in the research on gamification in education?

RQ7. Who are the most prolific authors contributing to the research on gamification in education?

RQ8. Is there a wide collaboration among researchers of gamification in education?

RQ9. Are the results of gamification in education research widely acknowledged or do they only reach a small groups of followers?

In the following section, the methods and data sources used to answer the stated questions are described. The obtained results are presented in Section 3, and discussed in the final section.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

In the context of both the stated research questions and the volume of data to be processed, we decided to apply the bibliometric approach to achieve our goal. Bibliometrics, according to Nicholas and Ritchie [39], is "the statistical or quantitative description of literature", with "literature" understood as "a group of related documents". The exemplary characteristics of literature that may be described are "subject, document form ( ... ), language ( ... ), date" [39]. Surveys based on the bibliometric approach have been proven feasible and effective in various research areas, including business studies [40], medicine [41], tourism research [42], and education sciences [43].

Three stages of the survey procedure have been defined:


The necessary planning of the survey consisted in the selection of data sources for preliminary analysis and specification of search criteria. All data sources listed in the Databases column of Table 1 were considered for inclusion in the survey. Eventually, three sources were selected: Scopus, Web of Science (Core Collection) and Google Scholar, for the following reasons:


With the abundance of literature on the survey topic, we wanted more to avoid false positives in the search results rather than minimize the number of false negatives. Therefore, we decided to use just two keywords: "education" and "gamification". While we considered the inclusion of other terms, we abstained from doing so. In particular, "learning" was abandoned as denoting a wider concept than education, and "instruction" was abandoned as a term having multiple meanings, only one of them connected to education.

For the two bibliographic databases (Scopus and Web of Science), the following assumptions were taken into consideration:


The search was performed on a single day (29 December 2020). Having retrieved, respectively, 2820 items from Scopus and 1988 items from Web of Science, we defined additional constraints:


Consequently, the following search terms were used:


As a result, 2517 items from Scopus and 1743 items from Web of Science were retrieved. The case of Google Scholar is different. First of all, we were not able to define search criteria that would strictly resemble the queries performed on the other two databases. This is a well-known problem in the bibliometric literature (see e.g., [44]). Trying to make the search criteria as similar as possible, we decided to use two keywords: "education" and "gamification" with the "allintitle" option. Note that the exact search procedure performed by Google Scholar is not known, but the reader should be aware that the mentioned option does not mean that among the 1040 documents retrieved using these criteria, there were only those exactly containing the given keywords in the title (in fact, many of them did not).

Then, additional constraints were added: patents were excluded and the maximum year of publication was set to 2020; it was also ensured that only English-language documents were retrieved. This resulted in the following search results link: "https://scholar.google.com/scholar? hl=pl&lr=lang\_en&as\_sdt=1%2C5&as\_yhi=2020&q=allintitle%3Aeducation+gamification\T1 \textquotedblright. A total of 980 items were retrieved with it.

#### **3. Results**

#### *3.1. Preliminary Analysis*

In order to address RQ1, first, the lists of publications retrieved from the three databases were combined using publication title and year as the matching key. Due to various notations of authors' names, we decided not to include them in the matching key, however as the chance of two same-year publications from two distinct authors having exactly the same title is low, the effect of this decision on the obtained results is negligible. Note however, that the omission of the other metadata in the matching key (for instance, the journal or book title) inflated the number of duplicates, as all publications having the same title and year are treated as one: while such a situation does not happen frequently, sometimes it does (e.g., a paper is published first in conference proceedings and later the same year in a post-conference book or as a journal article).

Moreover, as we were aware of notable differences in letter case and interpunction of titles obtained from respective databases, the titles were matched considering only the alphanumeric characters, all converted to lowercase. As a result, 3944 unique items were identified (out of 5240 total retrieved items).

Table 2 shows the cross-coverage between three queried databases (given in the first column). For every row, corresponding to database D, the three columns (referred to as C2..4) list the share of publications retrieved from D that were also found in the database given in the respective header of C2..4 (note the denominator is the number of publications in D, hence the total of respective columns is not 100%). If the column denotes database D, the given number is the share of publications from D that were not found in either of the two other databases. The fifth column gives the share of items having duplicates in the same database. It should be reminded that the number of duplicates reported here results from the chosen data consolidation procedure (see the previous paragraph), and includes as duplicates many papers which are not actually duplicates. On the other hand, while the mentioned procedure helped to remove many actual duplicates, particularly from the Google Scholar results, we have found through manual examination of randomly chosen items that there still were multiple publications listed under several more or less modified titles (usually fragments of other metadata were included in the actual title, probably as a result of an imperfect automatic acquisition of metadata by Google Scholar). As we did not aim to ensure the quality of bibliographic data, we did not attempt to correct such issues.

**Table 2.** Co-occurrence of publications in the considered databases.


The values in columns C2..5 in each respective row sum up to 100%. The sixth column is not related directly to the preceding four, and shows the share of items retrieved from database D in the combined list of 3944 unique items.

Looking at the obtained results, it is quite surprising—in the context of prior results such as those reported in [45], which indicated similar coverage at least of Scopus and Web of Science—how large the share of publications unique to just one database is. Even if we look only at the two bibliographic databases which were searched using criteria as alike as possible, it reaches about half (Web of Science) or more than half (Scopus) of their respective content. This is an important observation for future literature surveys on the topic, indicating the significant differences in coverage of the databases.

Figure 1 provides a visual answer to RQ1, showing the number of publications registered in respective databases in subsequent years. The items with no publication year indicated were omitted, as well as few publications having erroneous metadata listing year of publication before 2010 (even as early as 1982) whereas their actual year of publication was found to be much later (after 2010).

Looking at Figure 1, the earliest items retrieved from Google Scholar were published in 2010, from Scopus in 2011, and in Web of Science in 2012. The scientific output became considerable in 2013 and grew from that year on. According to data from both Scopus and Web of Science, the growth dynamics was high and continued until recently. The results obtained from Google Scholar paint a somewhat different picture: here, the growth was moderate and reached its peak in 2018.

Regarding the data for 2020, it must be taken into consideration that although the survey was performed at the end of 2020, there are many publications still in press which will have a publication year of 2020 (this applies to all three data sources), and there is a delay between when an item is published and when it is registered in a bibliographic database. This applies specifically to Scopus and Web of Science (especially the latter, having very long data processing periods, which explains the sharp drop in the number of publications for 2020).

**Figure 1.** Number of publications meeting the search criteria in subsequent years.

For the purpose of performing the main analysis, the largest data source, Scopus, was chosen, as it covers a sufficient share (over 60%) of relevant publications identified in any of the considered databases and provides the complete set of information needed to answer all stated research questions. It is also the only source which provides unique author identification numbers, helping to avoid mistreatment of a single author publishing under different names or name forms as well as multiple authors having the same surname and first name initials. To illustrate the advantages of such precise identification of authors, among the 24 most prolific authors listed in Section 3.2.6, if the counts obtained by assigning publications to authors by their surname and initials were used instead, only 13 authors would have their publication count unchanged, of which only nine would retain their rank, and four authors would not even make it to the list.

#### *3.2. Main Analysis*

#### 3.2.1. Geographic Distribution of Scientific Contribution

Figure 2 provides a visual answer to RQ2, showing the geographic distribution of the research based on data retrieved from Scopus regarding location of institutions with which the publication authors were affiliated. Researchers from exactly 100 countries and territories contributed to the studies on gamification in education. While, predictably, the largest share of research (almost 13% of publications) comes from United States of America, Spain comes closely behind (almost 9%), followed by United Kingdom and Germany (both 5.4%) and then Brazil (4.2%), Portugal (3.3%), and Australia 3.1%. The last three countries that qualified to the top 10 are Italy (2.8%), Canada, and Malaysia (both 2.5%). The combined output of the top 10 countries constitutes 50.9% of the whole analyzed data set.

**Figure 2.** Number of publications coming from respective countries.

#### 3.2.2. Forms of Publication

Figure 3 provides a visual answer to RQ3, showing the number of publications classified according to their types. As can be seen, over 63% of the analyzed items were conference papers, and a little less than 1/3rd were journal articles. Book chapters constitute less than 1/20th of the publications and books, about 1/180th of the whole set.

**Figure 3.** Number of publications of respective type.

#### 3.2.3. Addressed Research Areas and Topics

With regard to RQ4, Figure 4 shows the number of publications attributed to respective research areas according to the classification used by Scopus (note that the Social Sciences category includes education sciences). Only the areas with at least 10 publications were included in the chart, but there were publications found corresponding to every area defined by Scopus. Note that many publications were classified as belonging to more than one category.

Looking at Figure 4, Computer Science is the area presenting the most interest in gamification in education (about 1/3rd of the publications), followed by Social Sciences (about 1/4th), Engineering (about 1/7th), and Mathematics (about 1/14th). None of the remaining areas passed the threshold of 1/30th.

A more detailed information is provided in Figure 5, which addresses the question of specific topics covered by the research. It shows the map of co-occurrence of the most frequent keywords, generated using the VOS Viewer tool [46].

**Figure 5.** The most frequent keywords and their co-occurrence.

In Figure 5, the relative frequency of keywords is represented by their respective font size, the co-occurrence of keywords is represented with connecting lines, and the clusters of repeatedly co-occurring keywords are shown in the same color. Note that some keyword labels are missing for no other reason but the way VOS Viewer renders the graph.

Among the most frequent keywords, apart from gamification and education which were used in the query specification, four keywords passed the threshold of occurring in at least one percent of analyzed papers: motivation, serious games, game-based learning, and e-learning. Regarding the connections, apart from some easily predictable ones (e.g., learning—training, education—engagement, or gamified learning—intrinsic motivation) there are also some less obvious (e.g., virtual reality—medical education, blended learning—software engineering, or adaptation—computer science education).

#### 3.2.4. Dissemination Channels

In response to RQ5, Figure 6 shows the seven publishing venues that were most often chosen by authors for dissemination of the research results on gamification in education. These include three conference proceedings series, three book series (also known to publish conference proceedings or post-proceedings) and only one journal. Together, these venues are responsible for 21% of the publications covered in the survey. The connected points depict the number of publications in each of these venues in respective years.

#### 3.2.5. Most Involved Scientific Institutions

With regard to RQ6, altogether, there were 160 distinct institutions identified in the dataset retrieved from Scopus listed as an affiliation of at least one author. Table 3 lists the 20 most frequently encountered ones. Seven of them are based in Spain, which is quite a surprise even considering Figure 2. Similarly surprising is the fact than only one institution based in USA made it to the top-20 list.

#### 3.2.6. Research Leaders

Addressing RQ7, Table 4 lists the authors of at least eight works covered in the query (their works combined constitute less than 1/3rd of the total analyzed output). There were 159 authors identified who authored at least three publications (this pertains to less than 3% of all contributors). While the most prolific authors are from Brazil, Portugal is the most represented country in the list with six authors.

**Figure 6.** The most frequent publication venues.


**Table 3.** The most frequent affiliations of publication authors.

#### 3.2.7. Research Collaboration

Addressing RQ8, Figure 7 shows the map of the most prolific co-authors, generated using the VOS Viewer tool [46]. The number of publications is represented by the circle and font size of their respective author name, the co-authoring of publications is represented with connecting lines, and the largest clusters of authors working together are shown in the same color. Note that some author name labels are missing for no other reason but the way VOS Viewer renders the graph.


**Table 4.** The most prolific authors.

**Figure 7.** The map of co-authors.

Several large clusters are easily distinguishable; only few of them are built around the most prolific authors, including (as shown on Figure 7): Isotani and Toda (pale red), Fonseca and Redondo (heather) and Antonaci (pale green); more such clusters include only authors who contributed a small number of publications, such as: Anastas and Brooks (red), Walsh and Jani (green), Whitehead and Briffa (blue), Osbourne and Whitman (iris), Hiltunen and Bauman (olive) or Walker and Lee (cerulean).

#### 3.2.8. Research Impact

With regard to RQ9, Table 5 lists the top 15 most cited works in the analyzed dataset. These works combined represent about 21% of the total number of citations (18,044, giving an average of 7.17 citations per indexed document). In total, 22 works (0.9%) passed the threshold of 100 citations, 379 works (15.1%) passed the threshold of 10 citations, and 1617 works (64.2%) were cited at least once.


**Table 5.** The most cited works on gamification in education.

Figure 8 shows the map of co-citations for the 99 most prolific authors, generated using the VOS Viewer tool [46]. The number of 99 was fine-tuned to remove numerous outliers, with one large, one medium-sized, and just one small cluster remaining. The number of citations of an author is represented by the circle size, the co-citation of authors (a publication in which they are cited together) is represented with connecting lines, and the largest clusters of authors cited together are shown in the same color.

**Figure 8.** The map of co-citations.

#### **4. Discussion and Conclusions**

By applying the bibliometric approach based on data retrieved from the Scopus database (and to a lesser extent, Web of Science and Google Scholar), and using simple visualization tools we were able to respond to all nine of the stated research questions.

Regarding RQ1, the presented results show that, since 2013, gamification in education is a vivid and quickly developing area of research, with hundreds of new relevant publications coming out every year. As the data for the last year (2020) are not reliable (many publications are still in the process of indexation in the databases), it cannot be said that interest in the topic has already passed its peak: the data from the preceding years argue for the contrary. This observation is supported with the prior literature surveys in the area mentioning an increasing number of publications (see Table 1 and the works listed therein).

As for RQ2, the presented results indicate that even though there are countries (USA, Spain, United Kingdom, and Germany) leading the research, it is not dominated neither by a single country or a group of them, and the interest in gamification in education is widespread as about half of countries and territories of the world contributed to the research in the area. These findings are consistent with the recent observations by Grosseck et al. [18].

With respect to RQ3, research results regarding gamification in education are mostly disseminated at conferences, and journals are the second choice of the authors. Book chapters and books other than conference proceedings are relatively scarce. Note that the domination of conference proceedings is much more notable compared to surveys covering a smaller number of publications, e.g. [19].

Considering RQ4, the notion of gamification in education has already spread to all the research areas defined by Scopus. The area most often dealing with it is Computer Science. This interest may be attributed to various reasons, such as:


Regarding RQ5, consistently with the fact that the most preferred dissemination channel for the results of gamification in education research are conferences, the proceedings series are the dominating publishing venues for the area. The only journal that managed to attract a number of publications large enough to be listed among the conference proceeding series is "Computers and Education". This should serve as an indication for researchers coming to the area where to publish their results to reach the relevant audience.

With respect to RQ6, the interest in gamification in education is not limited to a handful of institutions, and those leading the field did not dominate it. As an illustration to the observed lack of dominance, the most frequent affiliation was one that none of the most prolific authors was affiliated with, and located in a country from outside the top 10 list (compare Tables 3 and 4 and Section 3.2.1).

Regarding RQ7, there is no huge gap in the number of publications between the leaders (the first spot is taken by S. Isotani who contributed with 21 publications) and the other authors, especially compared to other areas of research (consider e.g., the signalprocessing guru, Harold Vincent Poor's 1809 publications indexed in Scopus). This may stem from the fact that gamification in education is relatively new field of research. The fact that only less than 3% of authors contributed with at least three publications indicates that research on gamification in education is usually a short-time activity rather than an area of scientific specialization.

In the context of RQ8, the presented results show that a number of collaborating researcher groups of various size have been established, however inter-group collaboration has been scarce so far. This may be interpreted in the context of the results of RQ7: in a shorttime research there is little reason to reach out for collaboration outside of an established working group.

As for RQ9, both the high number of citations of the key works in the area and a large co-citation cluster involving multiple authors indicate that the research community acknowledges one another's work on gamification in education.

The results of RQ9 also support the correctness of the choice of search phrases: all the identified most-cited authors are actually contributors to the area of gamification in education. For a comparison, the list of top-cited authors in [18] lists such names as Deterding, Zichermann, Werbach, or even Deci, all of whom have important contributions to gamification research yet outside of the covered educational area.

In conclusion, we would like to underline the key observations from the performed survey: The fast growth of the publications in the area of gamification in education continuing for at least seven years. The worldwide interest in the area is indicated by the number of countries in which the contributing authors are based and the number of institutions to which they are affiliated. An effective research communication in the area is documented by the high number of citations and the large cluster of co-citations. We believe these findings can inspire new research in this field, both by confirming the ongoing interest in the area, and by revealing data such as the unexpected keyword connections, which allows new research questions to be pursued.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data were obtained from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar and are available from the author with the permission of their respective providers.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

