Characteristics of a Persuasive Educational System: A Systematic Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I used the following criteria for evaluating this review paper:

1) Is it comprehensive? Does it include most of the new literature in the area? Does it provide sufficient details and examples? Is there any other research that should be included?

2) Does it provide a novel perspective (dimensions, classification, viewpoint)? A review paper is valuable when it provides a new perspective that allows to gain some new insights, in comparison with other reviews of the area. Ideally these insights would be useful to discover new directions of future research or new problems for other researchers in the field. 

 

3) Is it clearly organized, written clearly, grammatically OK, with appropriate illustrations, if needed.

***

1) The paper presents a systematic review of the literature between 2014 and 2020 about techniques used in persuasive educational systems (PESs). The authors selected 19 relevant papers that are related to persuasive educational systems design and their evaluation. The criteria used for the selection of relevant papers were clearly stated. However, it wasn’t made clear if all the papers reviewed were game-based systems? It seems that the reviewed papers covered both game-based and non-game-based, as shown in Table 5, but it should be stated clearly.

Through the analysis of the papers, the researchers identified seven necessary characteristics for building a persuasive educational system. The characteristics include persuasive strategies, susceptibility, personalized persuasion, gamification, context, student areas and theories. The identified characteristics of persuasive technology were discussed in detail along with the existing frameworks that are commonly used for the design and evaluation of PESs. The authors used examples and tables to explain the progress made in applications of persuasive technology in education. An overview of persuasive strategies applied in educational systems, the context, and evaluation methods were discussed. Thus the review can be useful in helping new researchers learn about the different methods, available tools and challenges involved in the design and evaluation of PESs.

2) However, it is not clear how novel the characteristics identified in the survey are. Reference was not made to other literature review papers on persuasive technology in education. What is the difference between this review paper and other existing ones? Also it was not clear how useful the new characteristics are to identify new promising research directions in the area.  This is an important issue which the authors need to address in the discussion.

3) Generally the paper is well written with respect to language and grammar. However, the structure of the paper and its organization makes it a bit difficult to easily understand. For instance, in section 4 “1. Tools…2. Characteristics” on page 7 should come before the tables. In section 4.2.2, the end of the last paragraph should be before the tables. Tables 3 and 4 should be presented under “4.1 Tools”. Is there a relationship or difference between Tables 3 and 4? What is the relationship between Table 1 and 5? In section 4.2.1 the authors stated that “Table 6 presents the persuasive strategies addressed by the selected papers to perform their studies” and in section 4.2.3 they stated that “Table 6 summarizes the persuasive strategies implemented to build the game-based intervention”. Table 6 could be moved to section 4.2.1 to make the paper easier to understand and follow. Some parts of the paper are repeated. For example,  in sections 4.2.4 and 4.2.5 “They identified 6 study strategies that represent students’ motivation and learning strategies” were repeated.

Overall, the paper needs to be improved by discussing how the review is different from other reviews of persuasive educational systems (in its scope, criteria for paper selection, perspective of analysis and characteristics identified). Why is this review novel and how is it useful in providing future directions of research.  The organization should also be improved according to the comments above.

Author Response

Dear reviewer: 

We appreciate your kind comments. We attach a document responding to all your observations.

Best regards, 

Fernanda Murillo. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The presented article is of great interest for the integration of persuasive proposals in educational systems. The strategies and objectives that it raises are very coherent. What aspects could be improved?
The document analysis procedure. Adding discourse analysis and categorizing other issues that emerge and are not included in the research objectives.
The use of qualitative data analysis software is of great help in this type of research. Similarly, conceptual maps of the topics or concepts that are closely related to our study purposes are obtained.

Author Response

Dear reviewer: 

We appreciate your kind comments. We attach a document responding to all your observations.

Best regards, 

Fernanda Murillo. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript is well written with sufficient theoretical foundation and methodology. There are only a few minor points for authors to consider and revise the manuscript.

1. Ln 52 & reference 8: This systematic literature review was based on Kitchenham's method. The reference does not show the name of Kitchenham and it seems to have a coauthor.
2. Ln 128: There shows a technical term with abbreviation "UTAUT," which needs some elaborations and perhaps provide its full name to help readers' understanding.
3. Ln 177: The authors could explain why only choose publications between 2014 and 2020. It made me wonder how many articles are there before year 2014.
4. Ln 218 & Table 6: It states that the PSD model provides 28 strategies. Table 6 presents more than 28 strategies. It would be better to identify which of the strategies in the list of Table 6 differ from the strategies provided in the PSD model.  Some discussions might be needed. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer: 

We appreciate your kind comments. We attach a document responding to all your observations.

Best regards, 

Fernanda Murillo. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The issues raised in my previous review have been addressed. The paper has been significantly improved.

There are some small grammatical errors that should be corrected. For example, in line 438 “However, they do not use the required tools to designing PESs to be educative”, "to" should be "in".  A careful proofreading is needed.