Flow Experience Analysis in Gameful Educational Environments: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

One of the most important challenges in gameful educational environments (e.g., gamified educational systems, educational games, and educational VR applications) is to identify students’ experience (e.g., engagement, motivation, and flow experience) during the system usage. Especially regarding flow experience, in recent years, different studies have analyzed students’ flow experience while using gameful educational environments. However, it is difficult to identify the state-of-the-art flow experience analysis in gameful educational environments. Facing this challenge, we present a systematic literature review investigating how the flow experience analysis is conducted in gameful educational environments. The main results indicate that most of the studies are using psychometrically validated scales to measure the students’ flow experience. Our results especially contribute to the fields of educational technologies and gameful design in education, presenting a state-of-the-art flow experience analysis in gameful educational environments.