Gamification in mathematics education: a systematic review

The objective of this paper is to examine the existing evidence on the incidence of the use of gamified software (applications) in the improvement of the performance of students in the learning of mathematics. From the methodological point of view, this study is based on a systematic review of the literature, therefore databases were used as sources of information: Dialnet, Redalyc, ScienceDirect and Scopus. With respect to the selection and quality criteria it was determined: to include all publications between the years 2014 and 2019, whose origin is derived from indexed journals, arbitrated academic publications or postgraduate theses; in addition, the content had to deal with academic performance in mathematics and be directly related to the research questions. These aspects made it possible to compile eight articles that were examined qualitatively. As a main result of this research, it was obtained that gamification can have a significant impact on the improvement of students' academic performance, provided that the applications used are designed under adequate cognitive parameters, are based on gamified elements and the teacher accompanies said process.