The Power of Play: Gamification for Engaging and Effective Learning

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the field of gamification has witnessed noticeable growth and popularity. Gamification implies the use of elements borrowed from games to enhance users’ motivation and engagement by adding ludic aspects to boring and repetitive tasks. Education is one of the domains where gamification rapidly gained the interest of researchers due to its promise to contribute to solving crucial problems in learning, such as the lack of motivation and engagement of students. Educational gamification refers to the design of instructional interventions that make learning activities more game-like, interesting, and meaningful to the learners, and thus more desirable, engaging, and motivating.

The aim of this Special Issue is to compile a comprehensive review of the state of the art in the educational use of gamification, highlighting its benefits, risks, limitations, and future trends. We invite the submission of original research articles as well as review and opinion papers.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Empirical studies on using gamification to enhance student motivation and engagement;
• Analysis and evaluation of the effects of gamified learning on student outcomes and success;
• AI in educational gamification;
• Personalized educational gamification;
• Educational gamification frameworks;
• Ethical considerations of the use of gamification in educational contexts.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Darina Dicheva
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• gamification in education
• adaptive gamification
• student motivation
• student engagement