Pedagogical Design Considerations for Mobile Augmented Reality Serious Games (MARSGs): A Literature Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors The paper presents a review of 23 papers from the last 20 years about using augmented reality gamified experiences por learning. The review is based on learning theories, which are often not considered when developing these gamified applications. As a result, they outline the design considerations that should be taken into account when designing and developing these types of applications. As someone more in the technological field and not in the educational field, the paper was an interesting read. The basis of the paper is that serious games should be based on educational theories. However, I have not found the proof of that in the paper (just a citation). It would have been nice to support this with an analysis on which papers were more successful than others for the learning process and a relationship between that and their use of the elements, or a comparison with other serious games not applying the elements in the theories, or applying them in a way that does not follow the theories. Only 23 papers using elements from educational theories are evaluated. I find it very surprising that only 23 papers passed the criteria, since this is a very popular topic currently. The list and description of the types of elements and their link to the theories is a nice summary for future designers. Minor: Line 290: Bullet point of first line should be removed. Table 1: Is the Total wrong for the social constructivism theory?Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis work made a literature review on pedagogical design considerations for MARSGs. I have several questions about this research:
1. Descriptions in Sec. 1-3 are a little bit lengthiness. The main contributions of this paper presented in Sec. 1.1 could be tidy up and listed more clearly. The authors may describe serious games in more details, the differences with other games and simplify other texts in these sections.
2. For Fig. 1, 111 articles were excluded, so what are the inclusion criteria?
3. From Fig. 2, we can see that some game elements are more frequently adopted in various research papers, could the authors clearly explain the relationship between such incidence rates distribution and (later) the proposed design considerations in Sec. 6.
4. I am wondering if there are successful game products that adopt the proposed considerations, or at least consistent with the proposed considerations. So far, the evidence are all from 23 research papers, i.e. academia. If not, user study on industry and academic guys could also prove the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Some mistakes:
Two Sec. 5.3.
Total number for Social Constructivism in Table 1 should be 22.
Ln 349 should be Figure 2.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMinor editing of English language required.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis work proposed game elements of MARSG corresponding to cognitive constructivism, social constructivism and behaviorism in the literature review. Comments on this paper are as follows:
1. Does learning with MARSG usually happen in the classroom?
2. The decision tree needs a clear introduction to explain the role of this element in the game.
3. Situated learning theory lacks a clear introduction to explain why it is not included in design considerations.
4. Generally, game designers use a top-down design process starting from the goal. The bottom-up approach in the article is not easy for game designers.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMinor editing of English language are required.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
this is very interesting topic. You have chosen three ground theories of educational sciences and implemented these to serious games. Thank you for defining well the term serious game. If you refer to educational sciences, you may need to take the definition of the learning environment as well as digital learning environment (eLearning, digital learning ..) under consideration. Here game elements well explained as well.
1) When regarding the eLearning platform (here the game), not all elements of learning come from the internal digital learning environment (the game) , but also from the external learning environment (waiting for turn, instructor or teacher advice, loading the game, hardware)
Note: also possible to white that the external learning environment was not included in this study.
2) According to the constructivist view, information as such cannot be passed on to the learner, but the learner is an active constructor of knowledge, i.e. a former of information structures in the learning process. The learner makes his/her own interpretation of the information and creates his/her construct of the information based on his/her previous knowledge and experience.
Constructivism represents the transformation of the concept of learning, from the copying of knowledge to the construction, transformation of knowledge. Constructivism includes that the learner him/herself is responsible what h/she is learning.
By trying to get points, achievements or rewards (here regarded as behaviorist), the player is still responsible of the learning. Sometimes behavioristic learning features can be in the background of constructivist learning
Consider change for instance in fig 3. FEATURES of Cognitive Constructivism, FEATURES of Social ..
and in the text explain more clearly how these three dimensions are connected to each other.
Although this is a major revision, I hope the paper gets published.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors have made great efforts on modifying the manuscript, and it now addresses all my concerns. Thank you.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe revised paper has clearly discussed the unclear points in the original article, allowing readers to clearly understand the method and its contribution. It is recommended that the paper be accepted.
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
I do not have any further requests for this paper.
Thank you for your outstanding work which will surely be used, implemented and referred.
