The DOI matches its Crossref record; 90 of the 90 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Tailored gamification in education: A literature review and future agenda
Open accessAbstract
Gamification has been widely used to design better educational systems aiming to increase students’ concentration, motivation, engagement, flow experience, and others positive experiences. With advances in research on gamification in education, over the past few years, many studies have highlighted the need to tailor the gamification design properties to match individual students’ needs, characteristics and preferences. Thus, different studies have been conducted to personalize the gamification in education. However, the results are still contradictory and need to be better understood to advance this field. To provide a complete understanding of this research domain, we conducted a systematic literature review to summarize the results and discussions on studies that cover the field of tailored gamified education. Following a systematic process, we analysed 2108 studies and identified 19 studies to answer our research questions. The results indicate that most of the studies only consider students’ gamer types to tailor the systems, and most of the experiments do not provide sufficient statistical evidence, especially regarding learning performance using tailored gamified systems. Based on the results, we also provided an agenda with different challenges, opportunities, and research directions to improve the literature on tailored gamification in education. Our study contributes to the field of gamification design in education.
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“Such discrepancies may stem from variations in implementation (González-Fernández et al., 2022), student characteristics, or subject areas (Oliveira et al., 2023).”
From Gamification on Mathematics Engagement and Motivation in Secondary School and Higher Education: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (2026) · cites this paper as Oliveira et al., 2023
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Cites
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Does Gamification Work? -- A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification
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“If for one side, using gamification in education, in general, increases student engagement and motivation (Koivisto and Hamari, 2019; Sailer & Homner, 2019; Bai et al., 2020b), on the other side, there are cases where gamification causes the opposite effects, discouraging or impairing the learning…”
BackgroundGamification in theory and action: a survey
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“Overall, our results for this RQ show the lack of empirical and longitudinal studies in the domain of gamified education, corroborating the gamification literature (Hamari et al., 2014; Seaborn and Fels, 2015).”
ResultThe Rise of Motivational Information Systems: A Review of Gamification Research
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“Next, tied in the second position with 9.5 points, we find the studies 2015and 2017 (Monterrat et al., 2015; Sailer et al., 2017), also published in journals.”
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“…the learner traits used to personalize gamified educational settings or the impact of gamification personalization on students’ learning experience (e.g., learning outcomes and psychological states) (Orji, 2014; Hanus & Fox, 2015; Hamari et al., 2016; Monterrat et al., 2017; Toda et al., 2017).”
Background
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Christopoulos, A., & Mystakidis, S. (2023) · Encyclopedia · doi:10.3390/encyclopedia3040089 · Cited by 297
Using gamification to support learning in K‐12 education: A systematic literature review
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Metadata
- Authors
- Oliveira, W., Hamari, J., Shi, L., Toda, A. M., Rodrigues, L., Palomino, P. T., & Isotani, S.
- Affiliations
- Tampere University (FI)
- Durham University (GB)
- Universidade de São Paulo (BR)
- Corresponding author
- Oliveira, Wilk
- ORCID
- Venue
- Education and Information Technologies
- Published
- 2022-06-29
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 373-406
- ISSN
- 1360-2357 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-7608
- OpenAlex
- W4293060971
- Cited by
- 341
- References
- 90
- Citations by year
- 2026: 65 · 2025: 97 · 2024: 101 · 2023: 73 · 2022: 5
- FWCI
- 105.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Education and Information Technologies (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Tampere University Institutional Repository (Tampere University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Newcastle University ePrints (Newcastle Univesity) (cc-by)
- Funders
- Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (2020/02801-4, 2018/15917-0)
- Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Online Learning and Analytics
- Keywords
- gamification, personalized learning, student motivation, student engagement, flow experience, gamification design, learning performance
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