Special Issue on Games and Gamification

With my friend Ahmed Tlili, from Smart Learning Institute at Beijing Normal University (BNU), we has just launched a special issue about Smart educational games and gamification systems in online learning environments (call-for-papers, PDF). Sustainability Journal, thanks to the editor Katherine Peng, supports this initiative. I paste below the summary:

“Educational games and gamification systems have been gaining an increasing attention from researchers and educators as they can make the learning process immersive, interactive and fun. Consequently, several studies have reported that they can enhance learners’ motivation, engagements and learning outcomes. However, several researchers have also pointed out that educational games are black boxes, i.e. the teacher cannot see (except the game score and the achieved game levels) how the learning process is occurring. Therefore, studies have highlighted the need of designing smart educational games and systems which incorporate analytics tools. These tools can analyze learners’ in-game data while learning to give insights about the learning process. For instance, some studies have used smart educational games and gamification systems to identify learners’ individual differences, such as personality and working memory capacity, or assess learners’ performance and outcomes.

«The applications of LA in educational games still appeared complex and no generally accepted approach was reported»

Despite the emerging significance of LA when implementing educational games, a limitation also remained. Multiple game genres and their contexts cause high variations of adopting LA in educational games. Specifically, this issue limits defining general analytics to effectively incorporate LA in educational games. In other words, the applications of LA in educational games still appeared complex and no generally accepted approach was reported. Additionally, no research has reported the way of designing educational games to incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) for smart learning experiences. Notably, it is also seen that there is a lack of applying smart educational games and gamification systems in specific areas, including language learning, accessible learning for disabled students, health care and e-health.”

March, 20th, 2020