Elements and Advantages of Gamification Method in Education: A Meta-Analysis

Gamification has emerged as one of the novel educational methods that aims to improve education by creating a happy, exciting, dynamic and active platform. In fact, this method strengthens different learning channels of learners. Gamification of educational content offers the concepts and contents in a more convenient way. In this regard, this research was conducted with the aim of exploring the elements and advantages of the gamification method using the meta-analysis approach. The study corpus included national and international studies conducted in the field of gamification, initially 79 national studies and 301 international studies were identified and downloaded, and among them the most relevant sources were selected as the statistical sample, including 30 national studies and 65 international studies (total 95 studies). These sources (articles, dissertations and treatises) were searched in national scientific data bases such as magiran, sid, noormagz, irandoc, ricest as well as comprehensive humanities portal and international scientific data bases such as Proquest, Springer, Sciencedirect, Mdpi, Researchgate, Ieee, Acm, and Google scholars. Next the corpus was analyzed with the aim of identifying the most significant and widely applied elements of the gamification approach and the advantages of this approach. It should be mentioned that the articles presented in the conference were excluded from the study corpus. According to the findings of the research, score, reward, challenge, feedback, leveling, story, interaction and competition with the highest percentage of frequency were the most important and practical elements of gamification in education. Also, creating and promoting interaction and participation, creating motivation, providing a platform for deep learning, improving performance, creating attractiveness and increasing it, developing cognitive growth, creating excitement and vitality, increasing the effectiveness of education, creating a platform for the use of educational technologies, developing social growth, development of soft skills and reduction of disorder were among the benefits of gamification in researches, among these things, creating and promoting interaction and participation, providing a platform for deep learning, creating motivation, improving performance, developing cognitive development, creating excitement and vitality, increasing Effectiveness of education, creation of a platform for the use of educational technologies had the highest frequency percentage.