The low recycling rate in emerging countries contrasts with the efforts of public policies and educational initiatives, highlighting the need for new approaches to environmental awareness. This study proposes a serious game called “Sustainable Planet: Mission Preserve” as an educational tool for teaching sustainable practices. The game emphasizes solid waste management and proper disposal, engaging players in challenges that simulate these actions. To analyze the game's awareness potential, we conducted a quasi-experimental one-group study (N = 32) using pre- and post-interaction questionnaires with the game. This allowed us to assess its impact on participants' ability to classify waste type and its correct disposal. The results indicate a significant increase in participants' awareness, contributing to educational technologies for environmental education.

Gamification is a prominent pedagogical tool to boost language learners' engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes. However, its effectiveness varies depending on contextual factors and individual characteristics, such as age. Understanding these dynamics is critical for designing inclusive and adaptive gamified learning environments. To address this issue, we conducted a quasi-experimental study with 299 participants to examine the effects of gamification on language learners' gameful experiences (i.e., accomplishment, challenge, competition, guidance, immersion, playfulness, and social experience) according to their age. Participants interacted with the gamified platform Duolingo and completed the GAMEFULQUEST questionnaire. Data processing used Structural Equation Modeling to explore the effects of gamification on language learners' gameful experiences. Results revealed that older participants had the highest sense of accomplishment and immersion during the system usage. These findings contribute to language education and gamified education, providing insights into the interplay between gamification and language learners' gameful experiences.

One of the primary objectives of gamified education is to promote students' behavior change to provide a positive learning experience. Most studies, however, focus exclusively on studying how students experience the systems, ignoring the emotions generated by sensory information. To fill this lack, we conducted a between-subjects controlled experiment (N = 62) to analyze the effects of gamification on students' basic emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust). Based on descriptive and inferential statistical techniques, we compared the students' basic emotions between participants who used a gamified version of a learning management system (experimental group) and a group that used the system with identical educational tasks without gamification (control group). The primary results reveal that anger was the most frequently observed emotion in both system versions, whereas scare was the least expressed emotion in both versions. No significant differences in emotions between groups were registered. We contribute especially to the fields of educational technologies and gamification with insights into the effects of gamification on students' basic emotions.

Beyond 400 million people in the world have moderate or complete hearing loss and typically communicate with sign language. Learning sign language can be challenging due to the lack of easily accessible learning materials and only a few people know their country's sign language. We present Roguelibras, a Roguelike Deckbuilder serious game that uses the genre's mechanics and gameplay as a mean to learn sign language and can be played even on low-end computers, aiding its use in developing countries. We tested the game with 29 hearing participants, using pre- and post-test questionnaires asking about the meaning of 9 different signs. According to a 5-point Likert scale question, the majority stated they enjoyed the game, while their score significantly improved when comparing knowledge of the signs before and after playing. This shows the potential of the game as an entertaining alternative to help learn sign language.

The flow experience is a central focus in the design of game-like environments. However, the current state of research in this area remains unclear. We conducted a systematic literature review to answer the following questions: How has the flow experience been analyzed in gameful environments? In what types of gameful environments has the flow experience been analyzed? and What types of technology have been utilized to present gameful environments? In addition, we performed a scientometric analysis. We identified 601 authors who contributed to the field, primarily through quantitative studies published as journal articles in education. Self-report scales are the predominant method for assessing the user flow experience. Games and gamified environments are the most commonly used approaches, with websites as the primary technology for delivering gameful experiences. Based on these findings, we propose an agenda for future research to guide further studies in this domain.

Understanding users and consequent personalization opportunities have become a major area of interest in gamification and UX research. Currently, personalization is mainly based on player typologies, which might give a partial picture of the plethora of user attributes. Addressing this challenge, in this study, we investigate the connections of the Hexad gamification user types, demographic factors, and gaming habits to understand how different user factors are related. Our results indicated significant but weak associations between user types and demographic factors and no significant association with gaming frequency-related factors. These results suggest that researchers and designers might need to consider more than the dominant factors to create personalized environments. We also provide exploratory suggestions on possible strategies to personalize gamification based on Hexad and other user factors. Our study contributes to the fields of user modeling and gamification, providing new insights into how different user characteristics are related while opening space for the conduction of new studies in the field.

Contribution: In this full research paper, we offer a quantitative analysis of how gamification influences students' gameful experience within a mobile online learning gamified platform, specifically Duolingo. We explored how these effects vary based on students' self-declared gender, providing valuable insights into the intricate dynamics within gamified educational environments. Background: The use of gameful environments as educational tools has been acknowledged for its potential to yield diverse outcomes in students' learning achievements, encompassing both advantageous and disadvantageous effects. Among the hypotheses regarding the observed diverse outcomes is that gamification may influence individuals' experiences differently based on their inherent traits, such as gamer type, age, and gender. While recent research has made strides in exploring this hypothesis, knowledge regarding how gamification can affect users' experience in gameful environments remains limited. Research Questions: This study aims to address the following question: How does gamification affect students' gameful experience (i.e., accomplishment, challenge, competition, guided, immersion, playfulness, and social experience) according to their self-declared gender? Methodology: To answer this research question, we conducted a quasi-experimental study (i.e., involving the comparison of groups without random assignment), organized in three steps. In the first step, we invited technology students to utilize the gamified platform, Duolingo, for a minimum of 20 minutes. In the second step, participants completed the GAME-FULQUEST, a scale comprising 56 items across seven dimensions, designed to measure their gameful experience while using the platform. They also answered a demographic questionnaire to indicate their gender (following ethical recommendations, we included the options: “male”,”female”, “non-binary” and “I prefer to not disclose”). In the third step, we employed Structural Equation Modeling to analyze the effects of gamification on students' gameful experience, according to their gender. Our sample comprised 110 students, with 42 self-identified as females and 68 as males. Findings: Our results indicate that learners' gender did not affect any of the dimensions of the gameful experience. This result opens up space for several insights into how gamification can affect the learners' experience according to different variables.

Contribution: In this full research paper, we contribute to the gamification literature by exploring students' emotions when completing educational tasks in a gamified and non-gamified education system, qualitatively explaining some triggers for their emotions. Background: An emotion is a spontaneous, short-lived, and subjective response to whatever is happening. Despite the various existing theories, we draw on Ekman's theory, which identifies seven basic emotions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, contempt, surprise, and disgust. In education, gamification has been widely used with one of its objectives being to provoke positive emotions in students. However, little is known about students' emotions when using gamified and non-gamified educational systems. Research Questions: Advancing the literature, we answered the following research question: what emotions are experienced by students when performing tasks using a gamified and non-gamified educational system? Methodology: For up to 30 minutes, nine males and seven females completed educational tasks in general knowledge, English, and reasoning. Some interacted with a gamified version of an educational platform, which included 10 gamification elements based on Self-determination theory, while others engaged with the same tasks in a non-gamified version of the same system. During system usage, we employed the Noldus Observer XT and FaceReader systems to map students' emotions over time. After system usage, semi-structured interview data provided a deeper understanding of why certain emotions were experienced. Finally, we conducted a Thematic Analysis to qualitatively interpret the data. Findings: Participants remained indifferent most of the time in both settings, indicating that the gamification elements had no extra role. The most frequent emotion was anger, an emotion experienced when a goal is prevented from being pursued. They also experienced some disgust. Those exposed to gamification elements were more likely to be happy and equally likely to be sad. In terms of gender, male participants felt more anger and disgust, while women felt more happiness and sadness.

Contribution: In this full research paper, we provide a qualitative view of how undergraduate students experienced flow state dimensions (i.e., challenge-skill balance, action-awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, total concentration, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, transformation of time and autotelic experience) in a gamified educational and a non-gamified educational system. Background: When in a flow state, individuals experience deep immersion and focus on tasks. Encouraging educational experiences toward flow is important because this construct is linked to cognition (academic performance) and behavior (engagement). Gamification has been implemented to bring students to a flow state. However, despite several studies (mostly quantitative) little is known about how the flow state is experienced in gamified educational systems. Research Questions: Advancing the literature, we answered the following research question: how do students experience flow state when performing tasks using a gamified and non-gamified educational system? Methodology: 68 students from 20 countries participated in an experiment. They were randomly assigned to an experimental group (a gamified system with 10 different gamification elements based on Self-determination theory) and a control group (the same system without gamification). Immediately after the experiment, we asked them to share some thoughts from their experience openly. We then conducted a qualitative study based on Thematic Analysis with 18 of them who volunteered for further interviews. Findings: We found that students who completed questions in the non-gamified version acknowledged time and social pressure as elements that sustained their engagement. However, we did not intentionally expose them to these game elements. A sense of competence emerged strongly as they completed the educational tasks through the system. We found different nuances of competition, including self-competition, associated with the sense of flow in both groups. The findings also suggest that the tasks play a role in the sense of flow they experienced.

Leveraging user behavior has become an increasingly valuable resource for modeling and personalizing systems based on the unique characteristics of each user. While recent studies have recently been conducted along these lines, there is still a lack of understanding of the relationship between students’ Myers-Briggs Type Indicators and their behavior within educational systems. Facing this problem, we conducted a long-term study (15 weeks) with 96 students, analyzing how their engagement metrics and communication frequency in a Moodle Learning Management System are related to their Myers-Briggs personality types (i.e., extroversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving). The primary findings indicate that i) participants identified as extroverted demonstrated heightened activity levels throughout more weeks of the course, and ii) participants characterized by judging and thinking traits engaged in a greater number of activities over the course duration. The results contribute to the field of educational technologies by providing valuable insights into the relationships between different characteristics associated with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and students’ behavior when using an educational system.

Gamification is commonly employed to support the formation of positive psychological states and learning outcomes, with one of the primary psychological factors chiefly relevant to learning being the flow state. However, the effects of gamification on students’ flow experience are still little known. Filling this gap, we conducted a between-subjects controlled experiment (N = 65) to analyze the effects of gamification on students’ flow experience. Using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques, we compared the flow experience between participants who used a gamified version of an educational system (experimental group) and a group that used the same system without gamification (control group). The main results indicate that the employed gamification design did not affect students’ flow experience. Our study contributes especially to educational technologies and gamification fields, demonstrating that gamification may not affect students’ flow experience.

The Internet of Things has become a comprehensive concept used in different contexts (e.g., smart cities, security, and education). In particular, in education, a vast literature has used the Internet of Things to promote smart education. However, there is still no overview of how the Internet of Things has been used to promote smart education. We addressed this challenge by conducting a systematic literature review on the use of the Internet of Things to promote smart education. Through a systematic literature review, we answered the following research questions: i) Which smart objects collect data from the physical world? ii) What types of information are collected? And, iii) what are the goals of collecting this data? Our analysis reveals that i) the most common smart objects in educational environments include sensors, cameras, ID tags, and wearable devices; ii) these devices collect data in twelve main categories, which include everything from microclimatic information to details of the emotional and behavioral state of the actors involved; iii) the purpose of this collection is to provide a more effective and personalized educational experience to individual needs. Our findings play a crucial role in educational technologies, establishing a foundation for future research endeavors and providing valuable insights into the use of the Internet of Things to promote smart education.

One of the most important challenges in gameful educational environments (e.g., gamified educational systems, educational games, and educational VR applications) is to identify students’ experience (e.g., engagement, motivation, and flow experience) during the system usage. Especially regarding flow experience, in recent years, different studies have analyzed students’ flow experience while using gameful educational environments. However, it is difficult to identify the state-of-the-art flow experience analysis in gameful educational environments. Facing this challenge, we present a systematic literature review investigating how the flow experience analysis is conducted in gameful educational environments. The main results indicate that most of the studies are using psychometrically validated scales to measure the students’ flow experience. Our results especially contribute to the fields of educational technologies and gameful design in education, presenting a state-of-the-art flow experience analysis in gameful educational environments.

In recent years, numerous studies have investigated the effects of gamification on different students’ experiences (e.g., motivation, engagement, and accomplishment). However, the effects of gamification on students’ academic performance are still a mystery. To address this gap, we conducted a between-subjects controlled experiment (N = 71) to analyze the effects of gamification on students’ academic performance. Using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques, we compared the academic performance of participants who used a gamified version of an educational system (experimental group) and a group that used the same system without gamification (control group). The main results indicate that the student’s academic performance was significantly higher in the experimental group (i.e., students who used the gamified version of the system). We contribute to the fields of educational technology and gamification by providing new evidence about the effects of gamification on the actual students’ academic performance.

In recent years, the personalization of gamified education has been widely discussed. However, results are still mixed (i.e., positive, negative, or null). At the same time, most studies focus on analyzing only classic gamification designs (e.g., based on points, badges, and leaderboards). To address this problem, we investigated the effects of ecological gamification on learners’ engagement according to their gamification user types. We conducted a quasi-experimental study (N = 104) using a gamified educational system and analyzing data through partial least squares structural equation modeling. The main results indicate that i) ecological gamification positively affected Disruptors’ sense of perceived usability, and ii) Players’ sense of reward. Our results contribute to the fields of educational technologies and personalized gamification, providing insights regarding the personalization of gamified education.

Educators worldwide strive to transform what are often perceived as "dull learning environments" into engaging ones. Although numerous studies explore gamification in education, few explore the gamification of class assignments. Building on the premise that individuals are more likely to engage with tasks they find interesting, our central research question was: What factors contribute to the interestingness of class assignments? We conducted a qualitative study (employing Thematic Analysis) involving Brazilian college sophomores tasked with designing assignments for their enrolled courses. Our qualitative findings revealed several characteristics that can enhance task interest. Furthermore, we found that interestingness varies based on individual factors, rather than adhering to a one-size-fits-all solution. Additionally, we profiled students according to their gamification user types (utilizing the Hexad framework) to understand assignments from the perspective of different user personas. This study offers valuable insights into the gamification of classroom assignments, contributing to the fields of gamification and instructional design.

In the last few years, virtual reality began to be adopted as a strategy to enhance the learning experiences of autistic children. However, only a few studies have analyzed the outcomes of using virtual reality for children with Asperger’s syndrome (i.e., a section in the large group of Autism Spectrum Disorders). Simultaneously, many neglect parents’ views on using virtual reality in educating children with Asperger’s syndrome. To address this gap, we qualitatively investigated the perception of parents of children with Asperger’s syndrome about their children’s behavior before and after using a virtual reality-based learning system. Employing Constructivist Grounded Theory, we surveyed and analyzed three parents’ perceptions of their children’s behavior with Asperger’s syndrome before and after continuous system usage for three months. Qualitative findings indicate that parents noticed that their children acquired positive behaviors throughout the use of the system (e.g., interacted with peers, engaged in group activities, and maintained eye contact with others), thus, advancing barriers related to Asperger’s syndrome. Our study contributes to the area of educational technologies and autism, generating new knowledge about the possibility of using virtual reality to enhance positive behaviors in children with Asperger’s syndrome.

Flow experience is one of the most ambitious targets of any user interface designer. However, it has remained elusive to evaluate how well user interfaces give rise to flow experience outside conducting invasive self-reporting-based questionnaires, which remove the users from the flow experience and can't be massively applied. At the same time, otherwise, well-built systems do track the behaviour of users on the interface, and therefore, user behaviour data could act as a reliable proxy for assessing the experience of users. Currently, there is little empirical research or data about which indices of user behaviours might correspond with having a flow experience as well as the different psychological constituents of the flow experience. Therefore, facing the challenge of using users' behaviour data to model users' experience, we investigated the associations between users' behaviour data (e.g. mouse clicks, activity time in the system, and average response time) and their self-reported flow experience by using data mining (i.e. associations rules) analysing data from 204 subjects. Results demonstrate that the speed of users' actions negatively affects the flow experience antecedents while also positively affecting the loss of self-consciousness. Our study advances the literature, providing insights to identify users' flow experience through behaviour data.

Currently, an essential challenge in education in Brazil is to promote quality education that reaches all schools in the country, even those with limited technological educational resources. With this work, we have made a contribution to the field of gamified education by creating a comprehensive didactic booklet that has been translated into Brazilian Portuguese, English, and Spanish, thereby facilitating educators to gamify their classrooms in an unplugged and personalized way. We have introduced an innovative approach to designing unplugged gamified classes, aiming to provide engaging and enjoyable learning for students. This instructional material is based on a framework of five distinct gamification designs, offering teachers a versatile toolkit to gamify their classes, even if they never had any experiences with gamification. Our resources not only serve as valuable aids but also function as guides for teachers, empowering them to gamify their classes in a manner that is both student-centric and adaptable to different contexts, an essential characteristic with the possible variations of the students and places. This booklet is the result of an intensive training course provided to 15 Brazilian teachers, even in a short period of time, training them with essential knowledge and skills. These educators gained proficiency in several key areas, including i) understanding the fundamental concept of gamification and your more common definition, profiling their students and recognizing the pivotal role this plays in designing effective gamified learning experiences for the evolution of them, ii) familiarization with the various gamification elements and their organization into the five distinct designs, and iii) crafting context-free lessons that align with each of these innovative gamification designs. In an evolving educational landscape, our work stands as a beacon, enabling educators to harness the power of gamification and create dynamic, interactive learning environments for their students. This initiative has the potential to improve the quality of education and awaken in students a curiosity that transcends traditional borders. Such a transformation in the educational landscape could have far-reaching effects, ultimately contributing to the cultivation of an innovative, engaged, and motivated future generation, which will drive progress and innovation in various contexts.

This experience report addresses training that was offered to teachers in Brazil. The main objective of such training was to train teachers to be able to gamify their own classes, in an unplugged way (i.e., without the use of digital technologies), and student-centered (i.e., personalized). The external observation was used as the primary data collection approach. This initiative was proposed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education, in which 27 laboratories were made available (one for each state of the federation) with the aim of preparing teachers nationwide. However, although some educators have shown a strong interest in using gamification as a strategy in their classrooms, a second group has demonstrated some resistance to the incorporation of gamification within the scope of education. These different levels of receptivity among teachers highlight the importance of continuous support and professional development to ensure the successful integration of gamification into the educational setting.

Studies on gameful approaches in education have constantly sought to identify users' motivation and experience. However, most of these studies have focused exclusively on students' perspectives without considering the teachers' motivational and affective issues. Thus, although the community already has considerable knowledge regarding motivational and affective issues related to students' experience, little is known about teachers' acceptance of using gameful approaches in education. starting to face this challenge, in this paper, we present a case study ($\mathrm{N}=41$) analyzing the teachers' acceptance of the use of a gamified educational system. The main results indicate that previous experience with distance education and gamification can positively affect the perceived ease of use of gamified educational systems. However, unlike expected, experience with educational technology can not significantly affect perceived ease of use. Our results contribute to the fields of educational technologies and gamification in education by presenting the teachers' perceptions regarding a gamified educational system in education.

The education of autistic children is highly challenging and has been calling the attention of different types of professionals to offer solutions capable of helping in the education of these children. One of the most promising possibilities is the use of gameful approaches (e.g., serious games, simulators, and gamification) in the teaching of autistic children. However, despite the recent efforts, it is difficult to understand how these approaches have been developed and applied. To face this problem, we conducted a systematic mapping investigating the design and application of gameful approaches for the education of autistic children. The main results indicate a predominance in the use of 2D games for personal computers, focusing on the contexts of nature, home, and city, analyzed by qualitative approaches. Our study mainly contributes to the areas of educational technologies, mental health, and game-based learning, by providing a general view and a research agenda on the design, use, and evaluation of gameful approaches in the educational process of autistic children.

Gameful approaches (e.g., gamification, games, and alternate reality games) have been widely used in education in recent years. However, the results are still contradictory and generated different challenges. One of the main challenges is to understand how different individual aspects affect the users' experience in gameful educational systems. To face this challenge, in this paper, we present a study ($\mathbf{N}=\mathbf{205}$) analyzing the effects of demographic aspects (i.e., age, gender, and cultural orientation) on users' flow experience (i.e., challenge-skill balance, action-awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, transformation of time, and autotelic experience) during the use of a gamified educational system. The main results indicated that age positively affected the overall flow experience while individualism negatively affected the overall flow experience. Our results contribute to the fields of educational technologies and gamification, providing insights into how different demographic aspects can affect the user flow experience in gamified educational systems.

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the world population in several ways. Schools had to modify their teaching methods, reinventing pedagogical practices and actions to students to continue learning in a new teaching and learning routine. In particular, gameful approaches (e.g., games, gamification, and simulators) were alternatives used to improve the quality of emergency remote teaching. However, the need to use these approaches on an emergency basis meant that institutions could not plan the application or analyze the impacts of these technologies. To fill this gap, we performed a qualitative study, in which four students and a teacher participated. Using thematic analysis, we explored their perception regarding the use of social gamification in emergency remote teaching compared to regular face-to-face teaching. The results indicate that some different gamification elements drew the attention of students during remote and face-to-face teaching. However, no differences were identified between the different teaching modalities. Our study contributes to the fields of educational technologies and gamification through insights into the application of social gamification in education.

Modeling users' experience in gameful systems is one of the main contemporary challenges in the field of human-computer interaction. One of the most desired and complex experiences to be identified is the flow experience (i.e., challenge-skill balance, action-awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, transformation of time, and autotelic experience). Facing this challenge, we conducted a quantitative study (N = 313) based on structural equation modeling, aiming to model and predict the users' flow experience through their behavior (represented by performance-related, interaction with gamification, as well as the time they take in different actions) in the system. The main results indicate that i) gamification (i.e., doing well in points, badges, and leader-board) was positively related to users' experience of good challenge-skill balance, ii) whereas it was negatively related to users' concentration. Thirdly iii) user performance was positively related to users' concentration. However, overall, the results indicate that while associations between user behavior and flow experience could be established, there remains future work to be done to fully explain user flow experience while using a system. Our study contributes to the fields of human-computer interaction, gamification, and educational technologies, especially through insights related to modeling and predicting flow experiences in gameful systems through behavior data.

In recent decades, several studies have suggested and validated user models (e.g., Bartle, and Hexad) to represent different user profiles in games and gamified environments. However, when applying these user models in practice (e.g., to personalize gamification), several studies reported contradictory outcomes. Recently, some studies outlined that one of the possible explanations for these contradictory findings is that people can present changes in their user profiles over time. In this study (N = 118), we present an analysis of the consistency of gamification user orientations after six months of the initial identification, by analyzing the association between user orientations in the first and second data collection. Overall, our results corroborate prior research demonstrating that user orientations can not be considered stable over time and also that the strongest tendency of the users might not be sufficient to determine how users change. Furthermore, we were able to identify that some user orientations can be more stable than others and model some relationships between their profiles after six months. Based on the results, we indicate a research agenda that can further the knowledge about the topic, as well as indicate a set of suggestions on how to model user profiles based on our results.

Students face several difficulties in introductory programming courses (CS1), often leading to high dropout rates, student demotivation, and lack of interest. The literature has indicated that the adequate use of gamification might improve learning in several domains, including CS1. However, the understanding of which (and how) factors influence gamification’s success, especially for CS1 education, is lacking. Thus, there is a clear need to shed light on pre-determinants of gamification’s impact. To tackle this gap, we investigate how user and contextual factors influence gamification’s effect on CS1 students through a quasi-experimental retrospective study ( \( N = 399 \) ), based on a between-subject design (conditions: gamified or non-gamified) in terms of final grade (academic achievement) and the number of programming assignments completed in an educational system (i.e., how much they practiced). Then, we evaluate whether and how user and contextual characteristics (e.g., age, gender, major, programming experience, working situation, internet access, and computer access/sharing) moderate that effect. Our findings indicate that gamification amplified to some extent the impact of practicing. Overall, students practicing in the gamified version presented higher academic achievement than those practicing the same amount in the non-gamified version. Intriguingly, those in the gamified version that practiced much more extensively than the average showed lower academic achievements than those who practiced comparable amounts in the non-gamified version. Furthermore, our results reveal gender as the only statistically significant moderator of gamification’s effect: in our data, it was positive for females but non-significant for males. These findings suggest which (and how) personal and contextual factors moderate gamification’s effects, indicate the need to further understand and examine context’s role, and show that gamification must be cautiously designed to prevent students from playing instead of learning.

User modeling in gamified educational systems is a contemporary challenge. In particular, modeling the students' flow experience (i.e., challenge-skill balance, action-awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, total concentration on the task at hand, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, transformation of time, and autotelic experience) during a gamified system usage is highly challenging. It is because measurement' instruments usually are invasive, removing the users from the flow experience and/or cannot be applied massively (e.g., participant observation, questionnaires or electroencephalogram). We faced this challenge by conducting a data-driven study (N = 23), where we used a robust statistical method (i.e., partial least squares path modeling) to model the students' flow experience, based on their interaction data (e.g., number of mouse clicks) in a gamified educational system. The main results indicate a relationship between the interaction logs and four flow experience dimensions. Our finds contribute to the area of gamified educational systems, through the students' flow experience modeling. Finally, based on our results, we also provided a series of recommendations for future studies.

Programming is a complex, not trivial to learn and teach task, which gamification can facilitate. However, how gamification affects learning and the influence of context-related aspects on that effect demand research to better understand how and to whom gamification enhances programming learning. Therefore, we conducted an experimental study analyzing how gamification worked and the role of context-related aspects in terms of intervention duration and learners' familiarity with programming (i.e., the task's topic). It was a six-week study with 19 undergraduate students from an Algorithms class that measured their learning gains, intrinsic motivation, and number of completed quizzes. Mainly, we found gamification affected learning via intrinsic motivation, effect that depended on intervention duration and learners' familiarity with programming. That is, intrinsic motivation strongly predicted learning gains and gamification's effect on intrinsic motivation changed over time, decreasing from positive to negative as learners had less familiarity with programming. Thus, showing gamification can positively impact programming learning by improving students' intrinsic motivation, although that effect changes over time depending on one's previous familiarity with programming.

Personalization of gamification is an alternative to overcome the shortcomings of the one-size-fits-all approach, but the few empirical studies analyzing its effects do not provide conclusive results. While many user and contextual information affect gamified experiences, prior personalized gamification research focused on a single user characteristic/dimension. Therefore, we hypothesize if a multidimensional approach for personalized gamification, considering multiple (user and contextual) information, can improve user motivation when compared to the traditional implementation of gamification. In this paper, we test that hypothesis through a mixed-methods sequential explanatory study. First, 26 participants completed two assessments using one of the two gamification designs and self-reported their motivations through the Situational Motivation Scale. Then, we conducted semi-structured interviews to understand learners' subjective experiences during these assessments. As result, the students using the personalized design were more motivated than those using the one-size-fits-all approach regarding intrinsic motivation and identified regulation. Furthermore, we found the personalized design featured game elements suitable to users' preferences, being perceived as motivating and need-supporting. Thus, informing i) practitioners on the use of a strategy for personalizing gamified educational systems that is likely to improve students' motivations, compared to OSFA gamification, and ii) researchers on the potential of multidimensional personalization to improve single-dimension strategies. For transparency, dataset and analysis procedures are available at https://osf.io/grzhp.

Abstract Gamification has been discussed as a standout approach to improve user experience, with different studies showing that users can have different preferences over game elements according to their user types. However, relatively less is known how different kinds of users may react to different types of gamification. Therefore, in this study ( $$N=331$$ N = 331 ) we investigate how user orientation (Achiever, Disruptor, Free Spirit, Philanthropist, Player, and Socializer) is associated with the preference for and perceived sense of accomplishment from different gamification designs. Beyond singular associations between the user orientation and the gamification designs, the findings indicate no comprehensive and consistent patterns of associations. From the six user orientations, five presented significant associations: Socializer orientation was positively associated with Social, Fictional, and Personal designs, while negatively associated with Performance design; Player orientation was positively associated with Social (Accomplishment), Personal, and Ecological designs, while negatively associated with the Social design (Preference); Disruptor orientation was positively associated with Social design; Achiever orientation was positively associated with Performance and Social designs; and Free Spirit orientation was negatively associated with Social design. Based on the results, we provide recommendations on how to personalize gamified systems and set further research trajectories on personalized gamification.

Gamification applied to education studies are focusing to encourage students to perform specific tasks, however many of these studies are still inconclusive about how much gamification can influence engagement. Also, the frameworks used to apply gamification in those systems are mainly structural (e.g. scoring and ranking systems) rather than content frameworks (where the game elements are applied to the content). Therefore, this paper aims at creating a narrative definition exclusively for gamification purposes. First, we developed an empirical research starting with a literature review of the narrative concept in other medias, such as games. Then, we mapped these definitions into features and crossed the similarities and differences across them, to find a common ground that could be applied in gamification contexts. Our results show that the narrative element definition to use in gamification contexts best drifts from the games ones, however its definition is unique to the point it could be isolated and used in future frameworks. We also found that the characteristics of this concept resembles some of User Experience.

Gamification has been widely employed in the educational domain over the past eight years when the term became a trend. However, the literature states that gamification still lacks formal definitions to support the design of gamified strategies. This paper aims to create a taxonomy for the game elements, based on gamification experts' opinions. After a brief review from existing work, we extract first the game elements from the current state of the art, and then evaluate them via a survey with 19 gamification and education experts. The resulting taxonomy taxonomy included the description of 21 game elements and their quantitative and qualitative evaluation by the experts. Overall, the proposed taxonomy was in general well accepted by most of the experts. They also suggested expanding it with the inclusion of Narrative and Storytelling game elements. Thus, the main contribution of this paper is proposing a new, confirmed taxonomy to standardise the terminology used to define the game elements as a mean to design and deploy gamification strategies in the educational domain.