Design guidelines for game-based and gamified robotics education: balance approaches across contexts, integrate hardware-software skills, and extend study horizons¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (1 mixed, 1 against) · 2 studies (1 quant-synthesis, 1 review), q2–q3 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The review synthesizes a design space outlining best practices and pitfalls for game-based and gamified robotics education, offering "actionable guidance for educators and designers". It recommends addressing the field's imbalances: limited adoption of advanced software (~17%), advanced hardware (~5%), and immersive technologies (~22%); over-concentration on introductory programming and modular kits; and short study horizons relying on self-report. It also proposes eight concrete future research directions.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Designs should attend to the core study features the review codes: approach type, learning context, pedagogical model, skill level, modality, immersive technology use, audience experience level, gamification elements, and game genres.

Constraints¶

• The review notes the corpus contains no randomized controlled trials and relies heavily on short-term, self-report outcomes, limiting the evidence base for the guidelines.

Target Learners¶

• K-12 students
• undergraduate and graduate engineering students
• educators and industry professionals

Target Learning Goals¶

• programming and software development skills
• understanding of robotic systems (electronics, mechanical assembly, control systems, sensor-actuator integration)
• motivation and engagement in robotics

Claims¶

• The reviewed corpus mostly targets introductory learners in short-term studies, with supervision level structurally tied to deployment context [-W]
• Gamified robotics studies skew toward higher programming/software development skill tiers than GBL studies [~W]

Related Strategies¶

• Gamified Practice

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Syed Tanzim Mubarrat, Byung-Cheol Min, Tianyu Shao, E. Cho Smith, Bedrich Benes, Alejandra J. Magana, Christos Mousas, and Dominic Kao. (2026). Game-Based and Gamified Robotics Education: A Comparative Systematic Review and Design Guidelines. Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26). https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791338