Gaming and Resilience: Teaching by Playing Together—Online Educational Competition at School during the Pandemic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript which I found to be generally well-written and interesting. Gaming can beneficial to learners in many ways, including at times of crisis.  Below, I present a number of suggestions, which aim at strengthening the article further.

Abstract

Add a sentence in the abstract, explaining the research design of the study and its findings. As suggested in the Guide for Authors, ‘The abstract… should indicate clearly the scope and main conclusions of the paper’.

Introduction

After reading the introduction, I am yet to understand what the purpose of this study is, and what the research design is, including its methods. As outlined in the Guide for Authors in the particular journal, ‘[t]he introduction should give the pertinent background to the study and should explain why the work was done’. With small additions, you can make the introduction clearer for the reader to understand the purpose of the study.

Also, on the last paragraph of the Introduction, at the end, perhaps you can add another sentence, explaining the structure of the paper. This would be beneficial to the reader, who will be able to formulate a clearer understanding in terms of organization and navigation within the text.

Material and Methods

At the beginning of this section, where you refer to elearning (page 4), as well in page 5 (where you refer to quality and innovation), you could strengthen your analysis with additional sources. I would suggest utilizing/ citing the following sources and content:  

Greenhow, C., Graham, C.R. and Koehler, M.J. (2022) Foundations of online learning: Challenges and opportunities, Educational Psychologist, 57:3, 131-147, DOI: 10.1080/00461520.2022.2090364.

Doukanari, E., Ktoridou, D., Efthymiou, L. and Epaminonda, E. (2021) The Quest for Sustainable Teaching Praxis: Opportunities and Challenges of Multidisciplinary and Multicultural Teamwork. Sustainability 2021, 13, 7210. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13137210.

Greenhow, C. M., Lewin, C., & Staudt Willet, K. B. (2021). The educational response to COVID-19 across two countries: A critical examination of digital pedagogy adoption. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 30(1), 7–15. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1080/1475939X.2020.1866654.

Efthymiou, L. and Zarifis, A. (2021) Modeling students’ voice for enhanced quality in online management education. International Journal of Management Education, 19(2) 1–16. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.ijme.2021.100464

Also, in the Material and Methods section, I was expecting to see information about the methods used. In other words, how did you collect findings about the learners’ experience? Did you ask them to answer a questionnaire after they played the game? Did you use any methods like observation (or participant observation) to collect findings? Were the students informed that their experience and opinion will be utilized for research purposes? Did they agree to participate in the research (informed consent)? All these methodological considerations should be clearly discussed in this section. As explained in the Guide for Authors: ‘[t]he materials and methods (or methodology) should give essential details, including experimental design and statistical analysis’.

The section ‘1.2 The importance of an educational competition/ has wrong numbering’. Is this supposed to be 2.2 since it appears under 2.1? In this section, I would suggest explaining clearer the ‘experiment’ you did, along with the presence of researchers. Actually, I was expecting to see this earlier in the Material and Methods. You have to describe clearer the setting of the research, the experiment, the role of the researchers, the researcher design, and whether learners-makers new that they participate in an experiment (ethical considerations: informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality).

Results

Good to know that the data have been collected through a satisfaction survey; individual questionnaires with students and teachers. I believe this information should be discussed clearly in the introduction as well as the Material and Methods sections. I don’t understand why the reader should reach the ‘Results’ section to find out this vital information.  The following sentence, I believe, should appear earlier in the analysis (e.g. Introduction. And then be explained in depth in the Material and Methods, along with all other research design and research ethics considerations):

‘Since customer satisfaction is one of the simplest tools for gathering feedback from players and measuring their fulfillment in an analytical manner, satisfaction surveys were performed at the end of each scientific venue. The aim was testing the enjoyment and the efficacy of our game based learning activities and gathering comments and suggestions on our initiatives. Individual questionnaires, different for students and teachers, with short and simple questions have been administered. The answers received confirmed the high appreciation and interest of both children and teachers, already displayed in the numerous live chat comments during the events’.

Discussion

In the discussion, perhaps you can a) discuss in more depth the main points of the paper, and b) make a stronger case for the original contributions the paper makes. In other words, why is this study needed now and how does it advance our understanding of relevant theoretical or empirical matters?

Very good work overall. I look forward to receiving a revised version of the paper.

Cordially,

Author Response

Dear referee, we would like to thank you for your appreciation of our paper. Your careful reading led us to helpful suggestions useful for further improvement of the paper.

Overall, we have accepted all your valuable comments. Thank you for suggesting recent bibliographic papers one of which, the one related by Greenhow et al. concerning Covid19, was also helpful to us in fulfilling the other referee's request.

Best regards,

Giovanna Lucia Piangiamore & Alessandra Maramai

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I read with great interest and pleasure the material received for the review. I believe that your work offers solutions to diversify and increase the attractiveness of the learning process, for all categories of students. Research data demonstrate the efficiency and viability of the use of educational games during online education during the Covid 19 pandemic. Your study confirms that cooperative learning and student-to-student competitions (in online games) facilitate the identification of solutions to problems related to environmental conservation and fair behavior in the event of natural disasters. The manuscript is logically structured and the ideas are clearly presented. Here are some ideas to improve it:

1. Abstract section: At the end of this section you may add a sentence indicating/summarizing the results and conclusions of the research.

2. It would be useful to formulate the purpose and assumptions of the research (at the end of the introduction).

3. About 500 teachers were involved. Can you tell if their specialization is identical or different? Are all teachers specialized in disciplines/subjects/fields related to the topic of the proposed games?

4. Have participants been trained in the rules of the game and their roles?

5. Have the difficulty level and complexity of online games been adapted to the age and level of intellectual development of the classes (Primary vs Middle School)?

6. Line 92: It has been enthusiastically played simultaneously by almost a thousand students all over Italy. The information in Table 1 and other mentions in the article (line 17) indicate that eight thousand students participated.

7. Table 1 may be more useful in the Participants section, not in the Introduction.

8. Line 152: I think the correct numbering is 2.2

9. Figure 7/above: Likert scale values ​​(1-5) are missing.

10. Results (for items where you have quantified responses with the Likert scale): It would be useful to do a variance analysis and identify differences of opinion between genders, between Primary vs Middle School or between areas and countries (for the Salvina and the earthquake variant, students from France also participated). Likewise, the opinion and attractiveness of the online game variant may differ for teachers (it is possible that the young and those with computer skills will be more attracted to this variant of e-learning). These analyses would provide information that can complement and detail your study (you could probably use them for other scientific papers; the analyzed study already has a reasonable volume of results).

11. Discussion: A brief comparison with similar studies from other countries?

12. The conclusions are missing (I know they are not mandatory, but when evaluating the article, a rating should be given to this aspect) and you should probably specify the limits of the study.

I wish you success in your scientific research activity.

Author Response

Dear referee, we would like to thank you for your appreciation of our paper. Your careful reading led us to helpful suggestions useful for further improvement of the paper.

Overall, we have accepted all your valuable comments.

As far the interesting suggestion about a variance analysis between genders, type of schools, countries, etc., as you assume in your comment we will probably use them in future research, hopefully in collaboration with sociologists and/or psychologists who will be interested in our data.

Regarding comment on Line 92 (in the current version Line 105), a thousand students from all over Italy is the number of participants in the Escape Room described in this paragraph. On the contrary, in “tab.1 and other mentions”, 8000 is the total number of students who played all the games during the different scientific events.

Finally, regarding the comment on “Figure 7/above: Likert scale values ​​(1-5) are missing”, we would like to underline that the Likert scale has been used in the questionnaires’ setting and that in the figures we used cumulative histograms to represent the total responses obtained for each grade from 1 to 5 for all games played.

We also wish you the best for your job.

Best Regards,

Giovanna Lucia Piangiamore & Alessandra Maramai