Gamification and serious games methodologies in education

Gamification as a concept was defined for the first time two decades ago, as the use of game elements in a non-game context. Specific game elements like points, challenges, badges and leaderboard are incorporated in the learning process in order to increase motivation, engagement, and satisfaction to students. On the other hand, serious games are interactive video games that have a defined purpose of learning and practicing skills rather than entertainment. Serious games aim to improve problem solving skills, critical thinking and learn specific knowledge through playing video games that are software that have specific learning oriented purpose. The first purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast different aspects of gamification and serious games in the education domain, in order to identify appropriate applicable environments for these two approaches. Another purpose is to identify models and frameworks to apply gamification and serious games that are more effective to increase motivation and engagement to students. The final purpose is to identify in which courses these approaches are more applicable and help to improve the learning process by increasing creativity, motivation, engagement and problem solving skills. Methodology of this research is realized by analyzing different research papers in conferences proceedings and journals in the last two decades for concepts of game based learning, gamification in education and serious games evolved over the years. Also questionnaires are conducted for academic staff of Albania universities to measure perception and identify challenges and strategies of incorporating these approaches in the learning process. We conducted qualitative and quantitative research analysis in order to achieve results to fulfill the purposes of this research in all the aspects. This research represents conclusions and recommendation related approaches to evolve gamification and serious games methodologies in the education system in Albania. The paper aims to suggest practices and some of the most appropriate and effective models to apply gamification and serious games during the learning process.