Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The current paper intends to present a framework called 7GOALS (Gamified Oriented Active Learning Steps), relating to game elements towards the behavioral attitudes for promoting sustainability and ensure the learning process quality. The methodology that the authors follow was based on a systematic literature review using the PRISMA Protocol, covering the content analysis of 130 articles indexed in the Web of Science database.

However, there are some issues that the authors must handle before considering the current paper for publication.

1) There are some sentences that need to be review since their meaning is confusing e.g., 'Even though the application of gamification in the educational sector and, especially in the e-learning environment, has increased exponentially since 2014 [27,38], it was in 2003 that extensive researches focused on game design had begun [39].'.

Also, some words are connected. See, line 434, 'advantageof'

2) In the research question the authors are saying: 'How can the elements of gamification be organized in a sequence of steps in order to effectively promote....' - What does the sequence of steps mean? Do these steps have to do with the development of new gamification apps? Actually, this is not clear in your manuscript.

Also, how does gamification act on the behavioral outcomes of the learners? This point should be clearly identified and discussed.

3) The paper misses a related work section. This section is crucial in order for the potential reader to see what other researchers investigated and where your research is differentiated.

4) Section 3 is difficult to be read. You have to insert maybe more subsections.

5) Some figures have issues. Figure 2 has resolution problems and some characters appear at the end of the numbers.

6) Table 3 needs more explanation since the column title is not readable.

7) Discussion is short. Actually does not discuss the main research question of how gamification can be organized in a sequence of steps in order to effectively promote changes for more sustainable behavior and guarantee the quality of the learning process.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are sending to you the review of the article entitled "Gamification in e-learning and sustainability: a theoretical framework".

We appreciate your contribution to improving this article. We inform you that the items scored by you have been met and modified in the work as described in the attached file.

We are available if you have additional information’s.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper aimed to present a framework proposal that relates behavioral attitudes and gamification elements to the stages of the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) to provide the continuous improvement of the learning process over time. The paper has a huge number of references (138 titles). It is hard to check if all of them were cited. For example, the last reference (138), I didn't found in the text.  I recommend the authors keep only the appropriate and adequate references related to the paper content. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are sending to you the review of the article entitled "Gamification in e-learning and sustainability: a theoretical framework".

We appreciate your contribution to improving this article. We inform you that the items scored by you have been met and modified in the work as described in the attached file.

We are available if you have additional information’s.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

You have addressed most of my comments and your article has been significantly improved.

However, i am not so sure about your answers for the missing related work section (literature review).

I understand that, the behavioral attitudes you presented are not included in any other work, but there are other research works that focused on other elements that influence the quality of learning when gamifying apps are used.

Also, you wrote that: "Academic literature on the topic is dispersed, isolated, and fragmented....", but this is the point of the related work. To gather them and discussed their finding in a proper way, even if these are isolated or dispersed, so as the reader to understand the advantages of the current work.

Finally, there are still some grammar errors in your manuscript e.g., "This work contributes to mitigate this gap." --> The correct is .... to mitigating the gap.

Please check again and correct the rest of the mistakes.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are to send you the modified version of the article entitled "Gamification in e-learning and sustainability: a theoretical framework".

We appreciate your contribution to improve our article. We inform you that the items scored by you have been met and modified in the work as describe in the attached file.

We are available if you have additional information.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf