Educational Games and Game-based Approaches in Higher Education: A Systematic Review (2014-2023)

With the leap of modern information technology, game-based methods, as a new teaching mode of higher education institutions, is booming. However, the review of educational games or gamification approaches in higher education is still insufficient though it has great informative significance in this area. By using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses) method and two databases, namely Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, a total of 31 articles were selected, from 2014 to 2023, with inclusion criteria. Two themes emerged from this review, namely the benefits and the challenges of gamification approaches used in higher education institutions. The findings show that game-based learning methods can positively inspire motivation improvement, engagement improvement, learning effectiveness, and knowledge gain of learners in higher learning. But in the meantime, the findings point out that only the cooperation of learners, educators, and institutions can meet the challenges and finally lead to effective learning outcomes.


Introduction
In the field of education, educational games are of great significance.It can allow students to experience a virtual environment with real elements, and this is more engaging than simple online learning to create lifelong learning opportunities (Rafiq et al., 2021).With the leap of modern information technology and its application in the field of higher education, online educational games have attracted more and more attention all over the world.As one of the learning forms, game-based learning is a learning mode realized by using digital and video technologies.It breaks through the limitations of space and time and enables learners to have flexible learning plans according to their own conditions, promoting educational quality.It is the time for higher education to adjust the learning mode using games as a tool.The problem in using a gamification approach in higher education is that the educators and students are used to traditional lectures, not used to learning the latest game-based learning technology in time.The most direct problem is that students do not have the ability to use this tool efficiently, and many of them still use games as simple entertainment after learning.Besides, educators also need the training because the development of educational games around the world has shown great advantages at the stage of higher education.
Although the development of research on educational games, past reviews are more about the online learning fields in higher education (Ramalingam et al., 2022), leaving a gap.However, it is crucial to investigate the research direction in educational games, specifically in higher education institutions.Thus, this study is to review the situation and research in educational games in higher education institutions, with two research questions: RQ1: What are the benefits of educational games used in higher education institutions?RQ2: What are the challenges of educational games used in higher education institutions?

Methodology
This part discusses how to use the method named PRISMA to select suitable studies related to educational games used in higher education institutions.It has steps, namely identification, screening, and included (Page et al., 2021), as shown in Figure 1.

Identification
The first step is identification.It finds and enriches the keywords of the research title, using Boolean operator or phrase searching or truncation to find similar or related terms, variations, and synonyms of the keywords for the study title, which are educational game and higher education in this study to find related studies which should be analyzed in this research.Then, the study can use the keywords and synonyms as search string to input to select articles in the two databases: WoS and Scopus, using different field codes.The search strings are shown in Table 1.A total of 450 articles were selected from the process.Scopus TITLE-ABS-KEY (("educational game *" OR "game-based approach *" OR "educational video game *" OR "gamify learning *") AND ("higher education *" OR "higher learning *" OR "tertiary education *")) WoS TS = (("educational game *" OR "game-based approach *" OR "educational video game *" OR "gamify learning *") AND ("higher education *" OR "higher learning *" OR "tertiary education *")) *: Search String.

Screening
The second step is screening.The 125 duplicate articles in two databases were deleted by the researcher.Then, using inclusion criteria to analyze the 325 eligible articles to do the screening based on title, abstract, and keywords, related to educational games and higher education.230 articles were excluded, and 95 articles were screened by criteria in Table 2.

Included
The studies which were included in this research are shown in Table 3.

Analysis Procedure
Analyses were carried out to answer the two research questions: RQ1: What are the benefits of educational games used in higher education institutions?RQ2: What are the challenges of educational games used in higher education institutions?Results from the selected studies are analyzed in the following part.

RQ1: What are the benefits of educational games used in higher education institutions?
This systematic review points out that there are 13 main benefits of educational games used in higher educational institutions.These games can contribute to knowledge gain, enjoyment, educational development, behavioral change, educational tools, better learning outcomes, engagement improvement, motivation improvement, learning effectiveness, skill improvement, attitude change, self-management, and computational thinking.Table 4 displays the benefits of gamification methods in higher education according to past studies.

Table 4
Benefits of educational game used in higher education.
What's more, 4 articles show students can acquire enjoyment from educational games.This approach is a way to link academic contents and fun of games, catch more learners' interest by its stress-free environment (Rajendran & Yunus, 2021)and make them accept learning contents smoothly with a positive attitude.
Another benefit of game-based method in this systematic review is that it can lead to educational development, based on 2 past studies.It provides opportunities for educators and institutions to make decisions with the aim through data analysis.It cannot be denied that game-based approaches encourage a better beneficial learning and teaching environment to get skills (Santhanasamy & Yunus, 2022).
Furthermore, another 2 studies show that gamified learning may cause positive behavioral changes for students.Using it may influence students' behavioral intentions, making students "thinkers" but not only "listeners".For example, they may enjoy their creativity when they participate in a game design exercise.
As mentioned in 4 articles, a game-based approach can be used as an important educational tool.Since it is a resource which can be accessed and updated more easily than the traditional curriculum, being proved to be a useful classroom tool.It can be a two-way tool, not only boosting the knowledge absorption in game but also inspire students extract and apply them in game by doing task or something else.
Besides, 2 studies display that gamify learning encourages better learning outcomes.
According to past studies, students who participated in experimental groups showed better learning outcomes like final course grades rather than the people who did not.
Also, 4 studies depict that game-based approach enhances engagement improvement of learners.According to past studies, students showed high perceptions about educational games and valued the engagement of gamified interactions.
Next, 9 articles show that game-based learning inspires the motivation improvement of learners.Gamification can be entertaining ways to catch students' attention.For example, gamification can motivate learners to attempt by friendly competition like individual competition and team competition by moving students' emotions like ambitions and efforts, giving them satisfaction by game performance.
5 articles studies display that game-based approach influences learning effectiveness of learners, making them understand faster and make fewer errors, easier to monitor themselves, interact with course mates, focus on learning contents, and provide feedback to get immersion experience and better retention.
Moreover, 5 studies display that game-based learning plays a role in skill improvement of learners.According to past studies, educational games can build socio-emotional skills like reflective thinking, critical thinking, organizational skills, communication, and collaboration.
3 studies depict that display game-based approach that make attitude change of students.As shown in a past study, playing the game changes learners' attitudes and feels more connection about country and nationality.
Next, 3 articles depict that gamify learning creates self-management of learners.It may fully maximize the learning capability of students, which contributes to promoting students' communication skills, problem-solving skills, stress management, time management, and eventually lead to self-study.
Finally, 2 articles show that game-based learning generates computational thinking.
Gamification fosters students' comprehension in handling contents logically.
RQ2: What are the challenges of educational games used in higher education institutions?This systematic review points out that there are 6 main challenges of educational games used in higher educational institutions.These games may encounter challenges like lead-in, expected outcomes, usability, game design, teacher training, and constructive alignment.Table 5 displays the challenges of gamification methods in higher education according to past studies.
Table 5 Challenges of educational game used in higher education.Challenge Study Lead-in [Mercer et al., 2017] [Checa et al., 2021] Expected outcomes [Ibrahim et al., 2018] [Nardo & Gaydos, 2021] Usability [Checa et al., 2021] [Ade-Ibijola et al., 2022] [Imam et al., 2022] Game design [Imam et al., 2022] [Soboleva et al., 2023] Teacher training [Доброскок et al., 2020][Hauge et al., 2021] [Kornevs et al., 2023] Constructive alignment [Mercer et al., 2017] [Romero & Kalmpourtzis, 2020] As shown in Table 4, 2 articles show that learners may need lead-in in gamify learning.Students who use games as an educational tool for the first time may not complete self-guide, they need supervisor or coach in course to support them or give them tutorials both in technology and psychology and adapt to the new learning tool.
What's more, 2 articles show that students may have some difficulties in creating expected outcomes in educational learning.Since educators and institutions had prepared the subject and information which they want to introduce beforehand like encoding, it is a tollgate for students to do the decoding to get the key points they need to master in different courses.
Another challenge of game-based approaches in this systematic review is usability, based on 3 studies.Issues like ease, local solution, gaming environment and new problems emerge in the game progress may lead to some challenges for game developers.
Furthermore, 2 studies display that game-based learning methods rely on game design.There are some issues that must be discussed in the process of game design, like rules and potential of players, length, purposes, function, limitation, and impact of games.
As mentioned in 3 articles, gamified learning may need teacher training.Making an educational game may use some professional engineering tools and teachers need to comprehend the principle of the game to teach students effectively.Besides, teachers also need to be required to join specific training master some latest digital skills with models in time and get more experience in the gamification field to observe students' performance and feedback.
Besides, 2 articles show that educational learning inspires constructive alignment.For example, according to the study which has used educational games as an educational tool to improve students' behaviors, the practice must be aligned to achieve its goals by assessment of learners and educators.Students need time to reflect and evaluate their game performance and educators and institutions can use their feedback to align the course or construction to reduce cognitive load.

Discussion
The result of this review points out the benefits and challenges of educational games used in higher education institutions.
Firstly, the findings highlight that game-based learning expands the utility of digital games, inspiring motivation improvement and knowledge gain of learners in higher learning.Because of the enjoyment of games, it can be used as a tool to encourage positive behavioral and attitude change, engagement improvement, motivation improvement, skill improvement, cultivating computational thinking and finally leading to self-management and better learning outcomes effectively.Besides, it can not only inspire learners' improvement, but also contribute to educational development.In conclusion, game-based approaches can create a learner-centered learning mode for students to manage and improve themselves.
Also, this review points out that there are some issues to pay a high level of attention to.For learners, they may need some support and guidance from educators and institutions to leadin and get directions to acquire expected outcomes when they start their gamify learning.For educators, they need to improve the usability, constructive alignment, and game design of educational games.For education institutions, they may need to hold some teacher training to ensure the effectiveness of game-based approaches.In summary, it is not an easy shift for higher education from traditional methods to learner-centered ones.

Conclusions
In summary, this study has analyzed studies about educational games in higher education institutions.The paper is to analyze the latest utilization of gamification learning approaches for higher education lectures.Databases, namely WoS and Scopus, have been used and 31 articles were selected according to the PRISMA method.The main results emphasize the benefits and challenges of gamified learning approaches in higher education.
The findings show that gamification learning approaches can bring positive behavioral and attitude change to learners and inspire motivation improvement, skill improvement, engagement improvement, and knowledge gain of them in higher learning context, and eventually lead to better learning outcomes.Besides, it can not only encourage learners' improvement, but also contribute to educational development.
But in the meantime, the findings point out that only the cooperation and efforts of learners, educators, and institutions can solve the issues in gamification learning process and lead to effective game-based learning.
Based on the results, educators and learners can find suitable game-based learning tools to utilize in teaching and learning activities in their higher education context.Moreover, educators should pay attention to the challenges of gamification approaches to utilize and improve educational games as a support of education activities.
This research has a few limitations.Firstly, it focuses on higher education but not a specific course.Future studies could try to focus on a particular subject to examine suitable games used to improve higher education learning outcomes.Secondly, this review was organized with articles from two databases, namely WoS and Scopus.Thus, the results might be different from now if the author uses other databases such as Science Direct, Google Scholar, and so on.
Despite its limitations, this research provides some outcomes about game-based learning approaches.It also enables people to get knowledge of recent game-based learning trends.Moreover, it points out important topics that should be researched in the future.Future researchers could pay attention to learners' emotions and the materials which can be used in educational games in higher education.

Table 2
Selection criteria of the articles

Table 3
Summary of the selected articles.