Assessing the Effects of Flow, Social Interaction, and Engagement on Students’ Gamified Learning: A Mediation Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Research on how to utilize gamification to enhance perceived learning is still in its early stages. The purpose of this study is to investigate significant psychological (flow antecedents-perceived difficulty and skill) and social aspects (social interaction-peer interaction and social influence) impacting perceived learning in higher education settings. The authors report that the effects of perceived difficulty and peer interaction on perceived learning results are mediated by engagement by examining the causal mechanism. Furthermore, involvement moderated the influence of students' assessments of their abilities. Student learning results were directly influenced by both engagement and social impact. Engagement was the most influential indicator for students' gamified learning and had the greatest performance volume.

Overall, it is a good paper and can be accepted. The quality of Figures 1 and 2 and Table 1 shoud be improved.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper studied the effects of flow antecedents, social interaction, and engagements on students' gamified learning through a mediation model and indicated that engagement was the most influential factor. 

I have a few questions:  

1 On page 6, the authors wrote that "There were 26 items designed, including two demographic questions". I think it would be better to show all the items and questions to clear the reader's doubts about the survey design. 

2 On page 12 Appendix. It is unclear if the questionnaire is a Yes/No option or points Likert scale, which would raise concern if the questions are neutral and comprehensive. 

3 Since the paper pointed out engagement is the most critical factor, it would be better if the authors could explain more about how to evaluate engagement in gamified learning, or show more literature reviews about related topics. 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

1. Introduction:

"The application of gamification in online learning further offers an alternative avenue of learning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic."

That sentence needs more detail explanation. The covid 19 boost the popularity of online learning. The authors should address the criticality of gamification towards online learning after covid 19 outbreak. Is gamification needed in learning process during or after covid 19 pandemic? The challenge of online learning is student engagement in learning.  Thus the research of gamification is critical. Maybe this research needs to be directed to the gamification on online learning. I think there are many gamification researches in regular (onsite) learning. In the other hand, there are more rooms for the gamification research on online learning.

2. Literature review 

a. The research question.. what is the difference between relationship and effect? why do they need to be asked twice? I think those questions are redundant. 

3. Research methodology

a. "57 first-year students, 12 sophomores, 118 juniors, 33 seniors, and 30 master students (See Table 1)." the terms of respondent category in table one is different compared to terms of respondent category in above sentence. The terms used need to be consistent.

b. The respondents were students who took the human development course in where there are specific gamification learning. This condition make the results of this study questionable. When the respondent experienced the same gamification treatment in the same course, could the result generalized for all gamification treatment in different courses?

4. Results

"In the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the composite reliability (CR) in each scale ranged from .891 to .944. They were greater than the suggested value of 0.6 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988), indicating suitable internal consistency of the scales. Why do the author used the CFA measures when they conducted the EFA?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf