Identifying and prioritizing the applications of game theory in the educational and learning environments using the BWM

Game Theory is a branch of applied mathematics that can mathematically model the real-world scenarios for situations such as competition and cooperation and predict their payoffs. The main point in Game Theory is that the interests of the competition or cooperation of both sides depend on each other's decisions. The teaching and learning environments are considered as an undeniable atmosphere of interactions among the learners, faculty members, and instructors. Using Game Theory to interactions modeling, we are able to analyze the situation to achieve the greater educational achievement. In this paper, for the first time, we used Educational Game Theory to mention the use of Game Theory in the education context. The aim of the present study was to highlight the types of applications of Game Theory in addressing various aspects of teaching and learning in the articles that were conducted from 1987 to 2022. This research is applied in terms of purpose and systematically provides a comprehensive review of research on the use of game theory in education and learning. In the first stage, by searching the electronic scientific and research sources and preliminary study of abstract, introduction, and conclusion of articles, we discovered that 42 articles were related to the purpose of our research. In the next stage, each of the studied articles was examined and analyzed in detail from four aspects: What is the application of game theory in the field of education and learning? Is there a mechanism design in the study? Who interacts in the field of education (learners, teachers, staff, and parents), and basically who are the players in the proposed model? Finally, we investigated how the articles evaluate and proved their proposed model. Using a questionnaire, the applications of game theory in the field of education were prioritized. The best-worst (BWM) multi-criteria decision-making method was used for prioritization. In the present study, we divided the use of game theory in the field of education and learning into six categories. The first category was research that analyzed participatory behavior in different situations. The second category was research that used game theory to create an environment for further learning; the third category was articles that used game theory to model conditions that would affect the quality of education and create an environment for further learning. The fourth category was research that modeled learner assessment conditions. The fifth category modeled and analyzed the educational behavior of teachers with each other and their teaching methods. The sixth category was articles that considered the collaborative learning environment and use game theory to recommend educational resources to group members. From the perspective of relationship modeling, 60% of the articles modeled the interaction among the learners, 29% modeled the interaction between the instructors and learners and 7% of the articles modeled the interaction of the instructors. One article modeled parental interaction in deciding whether to hire a tutor and one article modeled the employee-learner relationship on cheating. The analysis of the findings showed that applications such as "learner assessment", "enhancement of learning" and "content suggestion" were assigned the highest priorities, respectively. Applications such as "teachers' educational behavior analysis", "investigation of environmental factors affecting education" and "participatory behavior analysis" were in lower priorities. We studied and organized studies which have applied Game Theory in the education area. The areas of learner assessment by the instructor or peer, grouping for collaboration learning, using the user model, and implicit modeling were some of the topics that needed further research in Educational Game Theory. Also, in learner/learner and learner/teacher interactions, new incentives design methods need to encourage players to learning improvement. The results of this study provide a perspective for researchers in the area of education and learning regarding the use of Game Theory in modeling the teaching and learning environment and creating conditions for increasing educational outcomes.