Topic evolution in the research on educational gamification

The research on educational gamification spans many topics of interest. As the total volume of research in this area has greatly increased in the last 10 years, it is interesting to see how the interest in the respective topics has changed over the same period. In this paper, we answer this question by means of keyword analysis performed on 7572 unique keywords extracted from 2203 papers. The obtained results reveal (1) the high popularity of keywords that are non-obviously relevant to gamification, (2) vast disproportions in the volume of research dedicated to different aspects of the same research sub-area, and (3) differing patterns of popularity among the most frequent keywords, as well as (4) keywords introduced and abandoned in recent years. The presented findings bear a number of implications for the future of research on educational gamification.