Gamification as a Field Landmark in Educational Research

In their editorial review, the JLE editors consider the concept of gamification, its spread in higher education research, and relevance at present. The authors analyse the current Scopus statistics to prove the prominence of the theme for researchers. The JLE scope can be further enriched via more studies on gamification in higher education and games in learning at large. The editorial may prompt the potential authors to proceed with more profound research in gamification learning techniques applicable to education.


GAMIFICATION AS A FIELD LANDMARK IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Learning Like Gambling' (Kim, Song, Lockee & Burton, 2018), game is defined as 'an instructional approach that can be used to enhance the effectiveness of instruction on student learning'. Reiners and Wood (2015) defined gamification as 'a designed behavior shift through playful experiences'.
Games tend to attract attention of researchers in various areas, including business at large, psychology, medicine, social work, etc. But education in addition to computing still remain the main playgrounds and research areas. Games fit educational purposes and learning mechanisms perfectly well. 'The most recent studies have focused on applying gamification in the education sector to promote the learning process' (Hakak, 2019).
Despite the hype around the gamification, more studies are carried out to know in-depth the negative or ambivalent effects of games, especially over-engagement and addiction. The limits for gamification are also on the research agenda.  The total number of publications amounted to 5,517 (a search with 'gamification' in the field covering titles, abstracts and keywords in the Scopus database, accessed September 28, 2019 The blue graph for all documents on gamification and the red graph for social sciences move in parallel (see Fig.  1). The data from the Web of Science database had 1,689 documents on gamification; the Science Direct brought 1,765 papers; SpringerLink had as many as 5,557 documents, including books and book series.

Scopus Statistics of Gamification Research
As for affiliations, the following universities and institutions had the highest counts of over 10 documents on gamification each (see Fig.2 Of 1,590 documents on gamification limited to social sciences, articles accounted for 43.8 percent (697 documents); another 40.9 percent were marked as conference papers (650 documents). The remaining documents also cincluded 112 book chapters and 54 reviews (see Fig. 3).
As one can see from the Scopus statistics, there is a trend to call attention of the scientific community to the new research on gamification not only by articles, but by publications in proceedings volumes of conference reports. The 650 proceedings papers accounted for 40.9 percent of all the documents on gamification, limited to social sciences (see Fig. 3). They came out in 120 sources.     The document counts distributed between many countries and territories unevenly (see Fig. 4), with the US (854 documents), Germany (496 documents), the UK (446 documents), Spain (405 documents), Italy (241 documents) being the top runners.
The most cited article on the list brought 552 citations. That is 'Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes' (Domínguez et al., 2013). The empirical article summed up the views of gamification in non-game contexts as of 2013. Its authors had designed a gamification plug-in for an e-learning platform for university students. The findings proved efficiency of the technique by better scores and higher motivation of the student participants (Domínguez et al., 2013).

A Field Landmark
In an attempt to determine the scope of research on gamification in education, viz. tertiary education, we focussed on the research in higher education contexts indexed in the Scopus database. To this end, we singled out all articles with 'gamification' as a keyword in the Scopus-indexed journals with educational scopes. We set the inclusion criteria for articles: (1) the time span of nearly 10 years starting from the year when gamification research and documents were indexed in Scopus for the first time, viz. 2011 (January 1, 2011 -September 20, 2019) -5,517 documents; (2) all research with the 'gamification' in the search field, then limited to 'Social Sciences' (1,590 documents) and additional keywords from the list offered by the Scopus, including: students, education, e-learning, teaching, engineering education, game-based learning, higher education, education technology, learning environment, active learning, student engagement, blended learning, medical education, student motivation, pedagogy, distance education, flipped classroom, teaching and learning, educational games, problem based learning, gamification in education, learning outcome, technology enhanced learning, MOOCs, online learning.
The keywords were selected by each author to compare the results and settle the differences (only three keywords were under dispute, the latter was amicably settled to mutual satisfaction). All the keywords selected were integral to the higher education field. All in all, we found 257 articles of the kind.
At the final stage, each author studied the 257 articles to exclude those that cannot be attributed as research in higher education. Some educational studies of gamification that are not marked as 'tertiary/ higher education/ university-level' but essential for all stages of education remained on our final list. It included 138 documents ranging from 'Factors affecting students' self-efficacy in higher education' (Van Dinther, Dochy & Segers, 2011) with the highest citation of 218 to 30 documents that had not been cited so far, including recently published.

Conclusion
With all that ten-year hype around gamification, it has become a field that still needs further scoping studies, but gamification exists and evolves as a research niche in educational research area. The research agenda is far from being straightforward, full of new green shoots. The present-day research goes beyond the early studies on the game potential for education and a limited range of game-based learning technologies. More studies come out to analyse the psychological mechanisms behind gaming for learning purposes and game-based learning; learning theories are explored to find more profound underpinnings for gamification.
JLE looks forward to new studies on the theme raised in our editorial review of gamification.