The Case of a Multiplication Skills Game: Teachers’ Viewpoint on MG’s Dashboard and OSLM Features
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The main purpose of the work is to verify the four hypotheses given in lines 450-457. Hypotheses have been checked, which is the result of work. All hypotheses relate to the attitudes of teachers to the DGBL. More important in this topic is the attitude of students to this approach. And the most important questions, of course, are about the effectiveness of these methods. These topics are not taken up by the authors, although they assume that they will be dealt with in their future studies.
The introduction suggests that the experience with DGBL is only positive. It is a modern technology that should be used instead of traditional teaching techniques. This is not true. Numerous experiences also point to flaws in DGBL, and not only in the context of remote learning during the pandemic. This is described in the literature. I suggest that the authors also point to the shortcomings of the DGBL.
In the article, there are no questions used for the key constructs. There is a link to the original questionnaire in Greek, but it does not work. I suggest adding information in English about the questions used in the surveys.
A surprising little is the result of work, that the acceptance of methods does not depend on gender, age and teacher experience. It will be very useful for authors to cite how they measured the level of acceptance. To do this, it is worth mentioning the questions asked, and then discuss in the background of literature what kind of acceptance is involved.
Author Response
Please note that in the revised manuscript version newly added or changed text is in red. We have made changes in several places to address the comments of reviewers and to make the purpose and descriptions more detailed and clearer to the reader.
Also, we would like to thank all 3 reviewers for their constructive comments as they have helped us improve our manuscript and we really appreciated their feedback.
“The main purpose of the work is to verify the four hypotheses given in lines 450-457. Hypotheses have been checked, which is the result of work. All hypotheses relate to the attitudes of teachers to the DGBL. More important in this topic is the attitude of students to this approach. And the most important questions, of course, are about the effectiveness of these methods. These topics are not taken up by the authors, although they assume that they will be dealt with in their future studies.”
The scope of this paper is to present MG functionalities focusing on what it offers to teachers and to record their feedback on whether it can be beneficial for the educational process. Thus, we focus this work on teachers’ view to the game we developed. There is currently a full-scale testing in progress with groups of students and their teachers but this is not within the scope of this paper, it concerns the next phase of our work.
“The introduction suggests that the experience with DGBL is only positive. It is a modern technology that should be used instead of traditional teaching techniques. This is not true. Numerous experiences also point to flaws in DGBL, and not only in the context of remote learning during the pandemic. This is described in the literature. I suggest that the authors also point to the shortcomings of the DGBL.”
We had referenced limitations of using DGBL (please refer to existing lines 189-217) and we have also added lines 83-89.
“In the article, there are no questions used for the key constructs. There is a link to the original questionnaire in Greek, but it does not work. I suggest adding information in English about the questions used in the surveys.”
We have added description of questions in English in added lines 485-502.
“A surprising little is the result of work, that the acceptance of methods does not depend on gender, age and teacher experience. It will be very useful for authors to cite how they measured the level of acceptance. To do this, it is worth mentioning the questions asked, and then discuss in the background of literature what kind of acceptance is involved.”
Added lines 620-623 and 485-502.
Reviewer 2 Report
The main question is addressed by the research. This paper is interesting, and written well.
"Minor" refers to the references. Bibliography, even if exhaustive, should be integrated with more recent existing publications.
I like the paper and I support its publication.Author Response
Please note that in the revised manuscript version newly added or changed text is in red. We have made changes in several places to address the comments of reviewers and to make the purpose and descriptions more detailed and clearer to the reader.
Also, we would like to thank all 3 reviewers for their constructive comments as they have helped us improve our manuscript and we really appreciated their feedback.
“The main question is addressed by the research. This paper is interesting and written well. "Minor" refers to the references. Bibliography, even if exhaustive, should be integrated with more recent existing publications. I like the paper and I support its publication.”
Due to the long history of research efforts in the field of digital games we have to mention some less recent sources that are considered significant. Still we have 45 references in the period 2015-2020 and 21 from 2020.
Reviewer 3 Report
Overall I find the article interesting and the approach belieavable. Literature review part is well done and in relation to the paper. I would however recommend expanding the results, analysing extremities (seems that some variants standout?) as well as providing more indepth statistical analysis, as the results seem somewhat shallow. One important flaw of how the experiments are described is that there is no information on how activity instances are got. Conclusions of this paper are not sufficiently well grounded on the previously described experiments. Discussions are quite generic - I would suggest tying in with works of other authors. The contribution could be further strengthened by better framing and clearer explanations of why the goals listed at the end of the Introduction actually matter.
Author Response
Please note that in the revised manuscript version newly added or changed text is in red. We have made changes in several places to address the comments of reviewers and to make the purpose and descriptions more detailed and clearer to the reader.
Also, we would like to thank all 3 reviewers for their constructive comments as they have helped us improve our manuscript and we really appreciated their feedback.
“Overall I find the article interesting and the approach belieavable. Literature review part is well done and in relation to the paper. I would however recommend expanding the results, analysing extremities (seems that some variants standout?) as well as providing more indepth statistical analysis, as the results seem somewhat shallow.”
Added lines 485-502 and lines 602-628. We have not found any extremities worth mentioning.
“One important flaw of how the experiments are described is that there is no information on how activity instances are got.”
Added lines 437-456
"Conclusions of this paper are not sufficiently well grounded on the previously described experiments. Discussions are quite generic - I would suggest tying in with works of other authors. The contribution could be further strengthened by better framing and clearer explanations of why the goals listed at the end of the Introduction actually matter."
Added lines 641-656
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
I think the authors have covered my remarks in the revised version of the paper well enough, therefor I can recommend accept as is.
