Improving nutritional assessment in pediatric anorexia nervosa: Clinical value of key serum biomarkers.

Gamification is described as using game elements in serious contexts. In a gamified environment, elements from games are embedded in a non-gaming activity to increase the engagement of users. It is often proposed to improve users’ engagement and motivation, thus becoming a new technique to strengthen users’ involvement in non-gaming environments. For instance, it is frequently used to promote students’ learning, customers’ engagement, and employees’ motivation. Due to its multiple advantages, the use of gamification is also proposed in educational settings to generate an engaging environment and improve students’ learning experience. These proposals have motivated multiple researchers to empirically confirm that gamification does affect the engagement of students and can be used in education so that the students can enjoy educational tasks and learn better. Several research studies have explored the impacts of gamification on the learning behavior of students, but little attention has been given to investigate the impact of gaming habits, i.e., the amount of time spent playing video games, of students involved in the gamification environment. Various studies in traditional educational settings have recommended that regular game playing can develop problem-solving skills which can also help the students in their school work, higher achievers play fewer games than underachievers, gaming habits exhibit a strong relationship with motivation of students and even choosing a career. Also, gamers while completing difficult tasks develop a sense of competence that helps them to stay motivated. Moreover, more time spent in gaming is often correlated with low social competence. Therefore, it is expected that students having different gaming habits will behave differently when exposed to gamification and this can provide interesting insights and suggestions about kids’ optimal gaming exposure from an early stage for improved learning. This investigation will also explore whether gaming habits have a negative correlation, if any, with gamified educational environments. Even though the effect of gaming habits was not explored in the gamification environment, it was observed that in a traditional classroom environment, gaming habits influence student’s motivation level. Moreover, motivation is usually categorized into two types: (a) intrinsic motivation and (b) extrinsic motivation. The former refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, while the latter refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome. Most of the existing studies in gamification literature focus on intrinsic motivation. This is probably because badges and points received after completing a task may provide a sense of competence that is further associated with intrinsic motivation. However, extrinsic motivation is still beneficial, particularly in educational settings where not every activity is enjoyable for everyone. Interestingly, four types of extrinsic motivation (external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, and integrated regulation) were explored in the literature, and observed that they are not equal. The first type, external regulation, is on the most extrinsic side, followed by introjected regulation and identified regulation, while integrated regulation is close to intrinsic motivation.