Exploring Students’ Opinion towards Integration of Learning Games in Higher Education Subjects and Improved Soft Skills—A Comparative Study in Poland and Romania

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thanks for conducting this research aiming to scholarly contribution in the relevant field. It is justified by its focus, approach, findings and discussion. However, the following points are offered to your consideration for the improvement of the article.

1) Lines 40 to 141: The Introduction section is too long. The whole section can be rewritten with the descriptions of narrowed down focus points of only the relevant items.

2) Line 241 and others: Backgammon1 should be Table 1, and so on.

3) Line 243 (Table 1): The description are to be in connection with the current research.

4) Lines 292-293: There should be a reference regarding the claim of importance of theoretical notions in Project Mgt.

5) Line 293 and onwards (section 3.3): Who conducted the gaming activities with the classes? Were they trained earlier to conduct for ensuring a standard? Because, two classes in two universities are expected to be participating in a similar environment.

6) Lines 434-437: Is there any previous research evidence? It needs to be referred.

7) Lines 454-472: These lines can be under a separate section named like 'limitation and implication'.

8) Conclusion section is also very long and with some irrelevant sentences. The whole section needs to be rewritten to present the summary of the content in a focused way.

9) Line 515: The current sample may not be small! Perhaps, it might be widespread to represent bigger population. Please check and rephrase.

Thank you again.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

First of all, thank you for taking the time to review our paper, then for your kind observation and proper suggestions. We considered each and every provided comment while revising our article in order to improve it. The comments have really helped us to improve our article. So we re-organized our paper, more logically as you recommended us.
Please find enclosed our response. The main changes are highlighted with red colour in the article.

Best regards,

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

 

A very interesting research work is presented about soft skills and the relationship with the use of games in teaching in higher education.

Although the proposal is of great interest, especially at a post-pandemic time when working with this type of skills is fundamental, also from the orientations that are being promoted at European level, a series of elements that penalize research are presented.

The main one has to do with the sample size, very small to make comparisons between students from different countries. This number of subjects participating, in the context of two universities, offers a very limited framework of projection. It is recommended for future work of this type to significantly increase its size.

 

On the other hand, we have a number of limitations. The theoretical framework presents the importance of soft skills but fails to create a sufficient theoretical framework to be able to the relationship shown between these skills and the use of games in university teaching. On the other hand, it presents gaps in the theoretical elaboration: the world of games in the current social reality means keeping in mind a range of related concepts such as video games, serious games or gamification in addition to traditional games. These developments have the most impact on recent research studies. As the authors do not make any kind of theoretical differentiation, everything seems to be related to soft skills but in a very indirect way. Previously selected studies, without a clear criterion, make this absence of theorizing evident. And this is a clear weakness of the work.

This situation shown is evident in the discussion, non-existent with respect to the previous works. In the discussion, the advances of the research presented with respect to the previous works must be related. As the theoretical framework is insufficient for research, the results are not related to the literature, which also exemplifies the weakness of the proposal. And this places the article in a clearly improvable situation.

We must add other issues, such as the figures shown, case of number 2, little justified, tables with recovery of previous studies that are not justified in their elaboration and recovery criteria.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

First of all, thank you for taking the time to review our paper, then for your kind observation and proper suggestions. We considered each and every provided comment while revising our article in order to improve it. The comments have really helped us to improve our article. So we re-organized our paper, more logically as you recommended us.

Please find enclosed our response. The main changes are highlighted with red colour in the article.

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Please check the whole article for English language mistakes and formatting (remove double spaces, etc). Please also see some comments I made below:

Abstract

- by participating to learning games (in learning games)

- compare opinion(+s) of 103 students

- appreciated a number of 71 items (ranked/rated)

- the achievement of the importance of some aspects (rephrase, doesn't make sense)

Introduction

Line 42:  interconnected with each other.

Line 45: NINETEENth (spelling)

Line 47: the twentieth century (20th)

Line 59: the internet of brains (reference?)
Line 66: in order to penetrate and "resist" the labour market. (consider rephrasing the 2 verbs)

Line 71: employees will have to retrain in order to acquire the new skills (it's called reskilling or upskilling)

Line 72: According to studies (must include reference here)

Line 78: it is identified (the following were identified)

Line 93: people they need (employees)

Line 93: people to adapt (people able to adapt)

Line 103: with achieving/achieving sustainable development (?)

Line 134: where are presented (where we present/give an overview of)

Line 136: about research instrument (about the research instrument)

Literature review

Line 143: Considered fundamental actions (rephrase)

Line 205:  the educable (the learner)

Line 217: Quoting Dieleman&Huising, Pânişoara G. states (Dieleman&Huising apud Pânişoara) 

Line 226: states

Line 234: the development, development of didactic games (?)

Research

Line 279: Appreciation note 1 (Rating)

Line 293: in order to fix the theoretical notions (to fix = to repair, find another verb)

Discussion

Line 444: We mention that Project Manager is an emerging job, finding itself in the Top 20 job roles in increasing demand, occupying in 2020 the 11th position out of 20. (reference?)

Line 448: In this context, Project Management represent a source job family for destination job of tomorrow (?)

Line 454: We mention that it is difficult to identify the determined factors and argue the identified situation (Why?)

Conclusions

Lines 491-501: I don't believe you need to repeat these ideas (already cleared in the previous section)

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

First of all, thank you for taking the time to review our paper, then for your kind observation and proper suggestions. We considered each and every provided comment while revising our article in order to improve it. The comments have really helped us to improve our article. So we re-organized our paper, more logically as you recommended us.

Please find enclosed our response. The main changes are highlighted with red colour in the article.

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper analyses students' opinion towards integration of learning games and their perceptions on the influence of learning games on the soft skills development in two different universities. I would like to pay attention on some particular parts of the research that can be improved:

Firstly, the Introduction section includes the goal of the study  but doesn't pose the research questions that were posed. The inclusion of them gives the better understanding of the research path for readers.

Why do you call Tables as Backgammons? From my point of view it is needed to change throughout the text for a unified name - Table.

The Discussion and Conclusion sections duplicate themselves in some part, you should correct it.

Also, a Discussion section should include comparisons with previous studies and their findings, while a Conclusion section should indicate theoretical and practical implications of the study. All these will improve the quality of the paper and increase a scientific soundness.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

First of all, thank you for taking the time to review our paper, then for your kind observation and proper suggestions. We considered each and every provided comment while revising our article in order to improve it. The comments have really helped us to improve our article. So we re-organized our paper, more logically as you recommended us.

Please find enclosed our response. The main changes are highlighted with red colour in the article.

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, thanks for revising the article and make improvements.

Reviewer 2 Report

The work has improved with the revision. However, being able to improve at a theoretical level, in its design and the treatment of the results. A higher level of demand is recommended in future research to facilitate its subsequent publication.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, thank you for reviewing the comments I have provided and for integrating the suggestions in your paper.