## 2 Literature Review
### Use of Gamification in Education  
The main uses of gamification in education are to increase student motivation, engagement, and interactions while improving learning outcomes and assessment [10; 34; 35]. Over recent years, practitioners have explored game design's motivational 'power' in domains as diverse as work, fitness tracking, health and well-being, education, commerce, learning, crowdsourcing, information retrieval, and organization engagement [36]. A systematic review of gamification in science education highlighted its positive impact on student motivation and learning [37]. It fosters active learning and engagement by immersing students in interactive activities, promoting motivation, and enhancing learning outcomes [38]. Studies focus on exploring how to use gamification to motivate students, enhance their skills, and improve the learning process [22]. Some studies highlight the effectiveness of gamified learning in improving students' academic performance, with no significant differences between genders, offering recommendations for educators to integrate these strategies into the curriculum [39]. According to the study by [12], gamification is not only increasingly used as an effective learning tool to create more engaging educational environments, but it also contributes to the long-term retention and application of newly acquired skills, which is crucial for lasting learning [40]. For example, a workshop that utilizes game-based elements to teach protein biosynthesis demonstrates how gamification can effectively enhance the understanding and retention of complex concepts in scientific education [41]. Gamification has been predominantly applied in educational contexts to enhance student engagement, motivation, and performance, effectively addressing challenges such as low student participation and lack of motivation [42; 43]. Research on gamification is growing, especially in university education, as analyzed by [10]. Their study, which systematically reviewed 14 studies on educational gamification from 2016 to 2020, largely demonstrated that well-designed gamification, with various game elements, improves student motivation, engagement, and academic performance. In this context, the study conducted by [44] highlights the effectiveness of gamification as a strategy to enhance student engagement in programming courses. It demonstrated a significant improvement in pass rates and a reduction in dropout rates, thereby underscoring the potential of this methodology to transform education in technical disciplines. Moreover,gamified applications have shown a significant increase in both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the academic performance of students with learning disabilities, with high participation and engagement being critical factors for academic success in these cases [45]. Emotions are known to impact behavior, including learning behavior significantly. As various authors have discussed, positive emotions like happiness enhance learning, while negative emotions such as fear and anxiety can inhibit it [46]. Thus, the findings support the idea that educational gamification can have a significant effect on academic performance, engagement, and motivation of students, something consistent with the study [47], which determines that gamification has a positive effect on the learning process of students, regarding their involvement and performance, particularly enjoyment, engagement, motivation, achievement, satisfaction, and attitudes developed by the student. There are also challenges, as in the study case [34], which, despite evidence of increased motivation, also identifies the potential risk of decreased motivation, classroom management challenges, and technological problems associated with using gamification in educational tools.