A Bibliometric Analysis on the Research Trends of Gamification in Higher Education: 2010-2020

Abstract

Research on gamifi cation shows that it has positive impacts on learning, performance, motivation, and engagement. To have a big picture on gamifi cation research in higher education, a combination of bibliometric and thematic analysis was conducted. For this study, a total of 432 documents from 2010 to 2020 which have been indexed in Web of Science database are investigated. Additionally, the researchers analyzed a group of 10 articles to review how much contribution they had to the body of research. General tendencies in the way gamifi cation has been changing or developing in academic literature were scrutinized from the perspective of a variety of diff erent factors including the time the works were published; the areas of the research fi eld; and the authors, organizations, countries, and co-authorship publishing the most number of works in the issue. Th e possible future applications and results for educational organizations and academicians, top academic decision-makers, and educationists are discussed.

Research Trends and Applications of Gamification in Higher Education: A Bibliometric Analysis Spanning 2013–2022

“…This result demonstrates the global impact of studies conducted by leading researchers in these countries. This supports similar results highlighted in prior literature (e.g., [20][21] [22][35][56]). For example, López-Belmonte et al [22] reviewed 1220 publications from the WoS database in the period 2011-2019 and reported that the most contributing countries in gamification research are Spain, the US, and the UK.…”

“…Previous bibliometric studies have detailed the current state of gamification use in higher education; as such, they provide a valuable contribution to trends in this area. When publication trends in earlier studies were investigated [20][21] [22][26], it was seen that the main variables studied were similar to those in the current study. Without a doubt, the increasing amount of empirical research on the use of gamification requires a comprehensive synthesis.…”

“…Regarding the ranking of journals according to the volume of publications, it can be said that Sustainability, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (IJET), and Journal of Chemical Education (JCE) made the largest contribution. Earlier studies (e.g., [20][21] [26][55] [56]) also reviewed documents relating to the use of gamification in education in these peer-reviewed journals. The reason for this may be the fact that Sustainability is a prestigious academic journal that publishes semimonthly scientific works-original papers, reviews, communications, and notes-and focuses on, one of its scopes, emerging new technologies in the education for sustainable development.…”

“…Previous evidence on the application of gamification has been well documented. In a bibliometric study, Khatibi et al [20] investigated the applications of gamification in higher education between 2010 and 2020 from the Web of Science (WoS) database. With this study, research trends, publication types, the most prolific countries, source titles, organizations, author keywords, and cited publications were revealed.…”

“…Note that the bibliometric review provides a comprehensive overview of the scientific productions to uncover research activity over time and identify the most prominent authors and affiliations [24]. Since previous bibliometric studies (e.g., [20][21] [22]) have focused on trends in gamification research from the WoS database, the current study, as recommended by Trinidad et al [21], used the Scopus database. Scopus is the largest database with abstracts and citations from more than twenty-five thousand active peer-reviewed journals and seven thousand publishers [25].…”