Types of Game-Based Learning in Education: A brief state of the art and the implementation in Greece

: The interest towards game-based learning (GBL) is continuously growing worldwide. However, several countries still face difficulties to efficiently implement GBL approaches in their Educational Institutions. This literature review is focused on the identification of the main types of GBL approaches that have been recently implemented in educational contexts, by providing one representative game-example for each case. The study also examines the implementation of GBL in educational contexts in Greece, identifying game-based learning popular tools and approaches. A qualitative content analysis is used to investigate the general characteristics of the identified GBL types and the representative example-games, as well as the main benefits and drawbacks that render GBL implementation impracticable in several countries. Overall, this study contributes in the research attempt towards the recognition of the main GBL types, focusing on their drawbacks or other features that seem to affect their broad implementation in several countries and educational contexts.


Introduction
Nowadays, more and more students grow up using devices like computers, mobile phones, and video consoles for almost any activity. On average, young people spend 7 hours a week on playing games (Forbes, 2019). Therefore, it is very crucial to motivate and engage young learners into learning activities by transforming the traditional teaching methods such as lectures and written materials in more digital form, like games that seem to attract their interest (Fu, et al., 2009;2006). Computer and video games let students dive in practice lead them to expertise by gaining professional skills and acquire innovative thinking.
Digital games are the perfect tool that supports learning to students without even realizing it. These games use virtual words and symbols through which students can experience the concrete facilities that these words describe. In that way, youngsters can understand the complex concepts without losing the connection between abstract ideas and the authentic problems that can be used to solve (Huizenga, 2009).
In order to delve deeply into the conversation, it is essential to clarify what Game-based learning (GBL) is. Overall. GBL is a type of education that provides learning through video games in order to teach a specific skill or achieve a specific learning outcome.
Students take in information from many sources and make decisions quickly. It takes your core content and objectives and makes it fun. Video games use design patterns, principles and data in order to deploy new learning opportunities and environments. Video

Types of Game-Based Learning in Education:
A brief state of the art and the implementation in Greece Kirstavridou

Tzafilkou Katerina
International Hellenic University / University of Macedonia, Greece 88 | KIRSTAVRIDOU, KOUSARIS, ZAFEIRIOU & TZAFILKOU games, computers and technologies in general, have created new social and cultural environments that help students learn by integrating thinking and social interaction using the collaborative aspects of video game play.
Game-based learning is an innovative approach that uses computer games which offers educational value using different kinds of software applications, to succeed teaching enhancement, assessment and evaluation of learners. This process includes elements of competition, engagement, and immediate reward.
Learners can compete with each other and collaborate in order to be motivated to achieve a specific goal and succeed high scores. Then they receive immediately feedback and rewards. This kind of challenge motivates and engages students to learn by completing series of activities (Fu et al., 2006;2009 (Bado, 2019;Hainey et al.,, 2016;Qian & Clark, 2016;So & Seo, 2018;Tan et al., 2017;Tokac et al.,, 2019), or targeting a particular educational level such as K-12 (Hainey et al., 2016;So & Seo, 2018) and higher education (Subhash & Cudney, 2018;Tan et al., 2017).
This study is different in that it follows an examplebased analysis approach, attempting to identify the main advantages and difficulties that GBL implementation brings, focusing in the Greek education context.
The main contribution of this research is the identification of the key GBL types that have been implemented so far in Education, by presenting one representative example-game or GBL platform for each type. The study also provides an overall evaluation by discussing the main advantages and disadvantages of the identified approaches in primary/secondary and/or higher educational contexts.

Features of Game-Based Learning
GBL is in general a teaching method, which gives the opportunity to the teacher to attract the interest of students beneath different parts of games, in order to make them learn and assimilate specific skills in real situations (Fu et al., 2006;2009 (Guido, 2016).
These educational games are usually designed to have different difficulty levels which are highly interconnected. Every skill and information that students learn in each level is necessary for the next problem-solving situations. In this way, students can deeper understand the content of the lesson, through experiential learning. The majority of these games has a relevant to real life content and will make children able to make their decisions based in information when they face situations like these in the future. Some games are designed in the way which promotes the learner-educator collaboration in order to strengthen their relationship, which is not feasible with other learning experiences (Kapp, 2012;Peters, 2016).

Game-based Learning vs. Gamification
There is a very common phenomenon that people confuse these two meanings. Game-based learning is the process of learning and training that uses games in order to deliver a specific outcome and achieve new skills and innovative thinking. On the other hand, gamification is the application of game mechanics such as point scoring, competition with others and rules of play, that it is used to solve problems and as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service. The main difference between them is the integration of game mechanics with training content.
In game-based learning the progress of each student depends on the understanding of the subject being taught. The training is fun and challenging provoking students' engagement. On the other hand, gamification fosters engagement. Gamification elements draw on human needs to collect, compete and succeed.
Furthermore, gamification is not expensive but is fast to onboard into an existing training platform.
Gamification provides engagement with simple training content and motivates students to complete more courses in order to beat their high scores, move up on the leader board, or earn rewards (Findlay, 2016).

Methodology Databases Searched and Search Terms
A literature review of online material related to GBL and research studies mainly indexed in ACM, Google Scholar, Elsevier and Springer Link was conducted.
The keywords used were 'game-based learning', 'game-based learning in Education', 'educational games' and 'game-based learning in Greece'. The keyword 'game-based learning' was the one that retrieved the maximum value of related results.

Inclusion Criteria
Full-length research papers, white papers, online material and studies found by keywords and the references taken from bibliography were short-listed.
The studies that have been found are analyzed and included (or excluded) in the current survey following the criteria described in Table 1.

Main Types of Game-Based Learning Approaches
This study identified seven main types of GBL approaches implemented in Education, in all levels and contexts. Figure 1 presents the identified types, and depicts one representative example-game for each one of them.

Key Elements of Success for Game-Based
Learning Approaches

Uniqueness:
The key element of GBL success is the motivation and the engagement that students feel when The European Educational Researcher | 91 they take part in such a learning experience. Learners feel more like they entertain themselves rather than learning. There are objectives, rules and goals which creates a sense of competition to all the participants.
Students are able to complete objectives making their own decisions. In this way, students face the consequence of their action, which happen also in real life and produces so many emotions (Peters, 2016). On the other hand, educators receive rapid feedback by watching how their students react and feel while they are playing. They can easily understand also some personality characteristics of students. For example, the "achiever" is a student who wants to be on top and the "socializer" the one who performs better in teams using his communication skills (Kapp, 2012). It is also a good opportunity to discuss with the students the most common wrong decisions after the game, which promotes the learning from mistakes theory.

Game-Based Learning in Greece
In Greece GBL seems to be implemented only in some exceptional master or bachelor programs.  "Gamelearn" GBL platform has been provided in Greek educational contexts as an outcome of the cooperation between "Gamelearn" and "Wide services" (Services). Gamelearn is the most awardwinning game-based learning platform in the world, in the improvement of soft skills for corporate training (Gamelearn, 2012).
Furthermore, several GBL platforms like Kahoot (Kahoot, 2020)  According to these study findings, we believe that it would be very important to use ICT features and GBL tools and approaches in order to modernize the teaching methods and make learning entertaining.

Kahoot: A GBL platform popular in Greece
Kahoot is a worldwide known, GBL platform, used by educational instutoins, companies and parents, as a method to turn learning into entertainment. The project was founded in 2012 by university students of the Norwegian University of Technology and Science (NTNU). It was launched in 2013 in beta version and when it converted to public, it became successful very soon. Since it was launched, it has been played in all the countries around the globe, from more than 3, 2 billion players (Kahoot, 2013).

Figure 2. Kahoot GBL Platform
The game design process in Kahoot is a very easy procedure and takes only few minutes. Anyone can create questionnaires and quizzes for any subject, through a user interface, by following easy steps.

| KIRSTAVRIDOU, KOUSARIS, ZAFEIRIOU & TZAFILKOU
There are already more than 40 million ready-to-play games offered by Kahoot, inside the platform, for many topics. One very important feature is that the game can be played by smartphones through iOS or Android software, without any difficulty (Kahoot, 2013).  worldwide has showed to achieve higher levels of learners' confidence, self-control, self-awareness, creativity, teamwork, problem solving and decision making skills (Gamelearn, 2020 (Griffiths, 2002).
Despite all the above, there are indeed positive effects that some teachers and parents have already noticed.
There are many experts such as William Massy that provide practical guides and created learning games in order to build games that communicate their knowledge and experience (Admiral et al., 2011).