Blended Learning Models, Curricula, and Gamification in Project Management Education

Project management learning involves realization of the project management’s knowledge areas, familiarity with advanced tools as well as developing abilities like critical thinking and decision-making. The majority of inexperienced project managers struggle to achieve these essential skills. Teaching project management is sometimes difficult due to the involvement of practical implementation along with delivering the theoretical concepts. The subject has been explored in a variety of ways by the research community highlighting the enhancements in teaching methodologies and curricula as well as the applications of alternative approaches such as blended learning and gamification. This study systematically identifies and examines the state-of-the-art in project management education by evaluating the improvements attempted through blended learning models, curricula, and gamification. The primary goal of this work is to summarize the impact of the aforementioned facets in project management education by evaluating the empirically verified research. The key findings represent that most of the studies used the mixed blended learning model, which combines advanced online and the traditional face-to-face educational practices. Moreover, the research emphasizes the modifications and improvements in existing curricula in order to achieve what the industry requires from the project managers. In addition, an imbalance has been observed in the use of gamification for the specific knowledge areas where most of the gamification is focused on communication management while the procurement and stakeholder management appeared to be neglected areas. Furthermore, this study proposes a taxonomy, which is designed to summarize the fundamental components of blended learning along with their advantages. The challenges and gaps as open issues are also presented in the area of project management education. Additionally, this research suggests a project centric model to enhance the learning outcomes of project management courses and provides guidelines for instructors to improve the blended learning and gamification experience for students of project management courses. Finally, the prospects of future research have been offered to the fellow researchers and practitioners engaged in project management education.


I. INTRODUCTION
Project management (PM) is the use of information, skills, experience, tools, and strategies in order to fulfill a project's specific purpose or objective within a finite time and budget while meeting predefined acceptance criteria [1]. Technical knowledge is not the only parameter that defines the ability of a project manager, the skills like communication, team management, risk analysis as well as hands-on The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Alba Amato . experience of advanced tools and techniques are also significant for project manager [2]- [4]. Project management education (PME) revolves around making students aware of the knowledge areas along with their importance throughout a project's life cycle.
Numerous studies showed that the failures and delays in the project deliverables are mostly due to insufficient skills of project managers, their non-familiarity with the significant knowledge areas or lack of expertise in using modern tools [5], [6]. Due to these reasons, the project managers fail to efficiently implement the project management techniques during VOLUME 10, 2022 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ the project development cycle [7]. There appears to be a disconnection between what project management education provides and what the industry demands [8], [9]. These concerns necessitate a review of the PME research to find the areas for improvements or modifications that might lead to enhance the PME. Despite the fact that higher educational institutions and universities need project management courses as part of various degree programs such as Information Technology, Software Engineering and Computer Science, they are still unable to fulfill the basic industrial requirements [10], [70]. PM courses are significant but challenging for both the instructors and the students. The instructors have to struggle and look for advanced methodologies through which they can transfer the knowledge, develop skills (like communication, negotiation, and requirement estimation) along with polishing their existing skills [11]. It's a misconception that PM courses are more theoretical than practical and that's one of the major reasons why students lack the basic required skills for managing a project successfully. The instructors have to look out for ways through which they can teach the technical skills as well as the required soft skills, which cannot be developed by just going through the lectures.
Some required competencies in PM need a very particular learning atmosphere to facilitate establishing the specific skills such as negotiation and conflict resolutions [12], [13]. Students are more engaged in performing the practical part of the courses as it involves hands-on experience, which they get by applying the different concepts taught to them [140]; however, the major challenge for the students is to stay focused and motivated [14], [15]. Another point that has been raised by some researchers is that the curriculum for the project management courses needs to be modified [16] by including competencies and design thinking [11], [86].
In the past few years, different teaching approaches and methodologies have been introduced including blended learning (BL) and gamification to improve the overall learning satisfaction and necessary skill development of PM students [17], [18], [77]. The main focus of these approaches is to develop and polish essential soft skills and to design environments where students can establish the technical skills and have real world experience. In advanced approaches, the goals are to keep the students motivated towards learning and exploring, which can result in increasing their interactions and engagements [19], [20].

A. BLENDED LEARNING
Blended learning has gained popularity in terms of overcoming various challenges of the conventional teaching techniques [136]. Teaching is not a one-sided process; both the instructor and student should put their inputs in the educational process. The instructors do not just have to deliver the lectures as their core responsibilities also include to ensure that the students perceive the delivered knowledge appropriately. Likewise, the students cannot learn by just listening to the lectures; they have to put their own efforts and take ownership of their learning. Blended learning promotes out of class learning by making students more independent and responsible enabling them to take the ownership of their own learning instead of totally relying on the instructors [74], [21], [111]. Courses using BL technique to deliver the knowledge make the students more responsible in the process of learning [22], [23].

B. BoK-BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE
Bodies of knowledge demonstrate the representation of particular domain of knowledge and present the set of terms, concepts, and activities used to define a specific area [137]. The PM bodies of knowledge include following: • Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK): The SWEBOK covers all the concepts related to software engineering that may come up in any software engineer professional's path [35], [36]. Software engineers across the globe take part in its development and contribute in it for its betterment. They can also add themselves as reviewers for others' contribution. This structure helps to improve the quality and information for future students [37], [38].
• Software Engineering Education Knowledge (SEEK): This BOK has its roots from SWEBOK and its knowledge areas are refined further by real time volunteers [39], [40]. It contains instructions related to the course outline and structures as well as elaborates the advanced teaching directions [41]. The main areas covered by SEEK include key principles, management, operations, process, strategies, quality, and construction [42].
• Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK): The BOK can be considered as a complete guide for project management understanding, flows, architecture, and implementation [32], [123]. It can be explained in many different ways and through various definitions. Summing it up, it covers all the steps of the project management from initiating, planning to closing of the project [33], [34].

C. MODEL CURRICULA
Curricula present the contents and the lessons to teach a particular subject [138]. The curricula for PME include following: • Computing Curriculum-Software Engineering (CCSE): The CCSE gives academic institutions and regulatory organizations guidelines on what exactly should be included in an undergraduate software engineering program [43]. It helps software engineers to get the basic education regarding software engineering, which drive them faster to achieve the associated objectives.
• Computing Curriculum-Computer Science (CCCS): This curriculum covers core-computing disciplines [44]. Based on the undergraduate programs, it helps to understand the difference among graduates by describing and classifying the qualities they may have specialized that could help them to work effectively for their respective departments.
• Information Technology Curricula (IT) 2008: The IT curricula contribute by providing the guidelines to establish the students' skills including problem identification and solving, communication, as well as inspire them to develop critical thinking [45]. It provides opportunities for students to recognize the advancement in information technology in the knowledge aware society and supports to instill positive ideas and values in them.
• Computer Science Curricula (CS) 2013: The CS curricula offer guidelines for undergraduate students of CS [46]. It provides techniques to design the software systems and presents guidelines to establish system specifications as well as developing, and testing them.

D. STANDARDS
Standards refer to the recognized techniques and approaches to apply the concepts related to particular domain [139]. The PM domain standards include following: • ISO 21500: This standard provides guidance on project management and helps to understand the practices that are required to be followed while managing the software projects [47]. It does not present details of project programs and portfolios but provides a general managerial idea of the whole project management cycle.
• ISO 10006: This standard is oriented towards quality management during the life cycle of a project [48], [49]. It covers every kind of project, large or small, complex or mainstream, short or long, individual or group, irrespective of their types. After ISO 21500, the ISO 10006 covers the quality management for different types of project.

E. GAMIFICATION
Another significant approach is using gamification while teaching PM courses to the students. The instructors design game scenarios for the students to provide an environment similar to the real world and solve problems using their technical knowledge (PM knowledge areas) and soft skills [24]. The main concept is to engage students through games and enable them to learn skills like team management, leadership, goal setting, and communication along with practically implementing the knowledge areas that are studied theoretically [25], [26]. Different techniques such as leaderboards, points, levels, and rewards are used in gamification to keep the students motivated [27].
Other techniques like role-play [28], active learning [29], [30], also proved to be beneficial to polish the soft skills like: • Critical and analytical thinking • Communication and collaboration [30] • Decision making and taking ownership [31] • Conflict resolution among project management students The primary focus of this comprehensive and systematic study is to identify the advancements in project management education, new approaches that are being used in the education sector along with their impact on the PME. Many studies on PME have been published in recent years; therefore, a thorough analysis is required to comprehend and conclude current research breakthroughs for this topic. A review on PME has been reported in the past [50] but it did not focus on analyzing the impact and shortcoming of the modern approaches like blended learning and gamification. Research questions for this study have been designed to address the study's goals, digital databases are explored in depth to find the relevant articles, which are assessed carefully to find out the answers of the research questions.
The succeeding sections are structured as: Section II elaborates the related work and describes why this Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was required. Section III defines the methodology adopted to conduct the research along with the research objectives, research questions and their motivation. The search criteria, filtering process and evaluating criteria are also described in Section III. Section IV provides a detailed data analysis and assessment score of the articles. Section V answers the research questions. Section VI discusses the findings from the systematic review, exhibits a taxonomy of BL components and their impact on teaching PME, addresses the challenges and gaps, proposes a project centric model and presents guidelines for the instructors. The study is finally concluded in Section VII.

II. RELATED WORK
Many studies have been conducted in recent years to analyze project management education. Most of the articles conducting surveys and SLRs did not consider publication channels, curricula and standards. Their main focus is on the tools and techniques instead of the problems that are faced by the students while learning and challenges faced by educators in teaching project management. Some papers suggested the use of modern tools or technologies but did not focus their studies on them. A recent SLR [50] considered curricula and publication channels for review. This study also focused on providing a guideline to the educator but did discuss the requirements of soft skills and challenges faced by the learners. In addition, it did not discuss the advanced teaching methodologies to improve the teaching experience for both the instructors and the learners. Moreover, the analysis on the use of blended learning models and gamification is also missing in the previous work.
Another review [51] presented the importance of groupbased assessments in teaching PM. It aimed to provide a framework, evaluate the group assessments, and then improved the effectiveness by data collection through interviews and focus groups. This work mainly focused on improving the soft skills like team collaboration, interpersonal, and leadership.
A research [103] examined improvements in teamwork among individuals belonging to different cultural backgrounds. This work focused on the curriculum and used the survey-based approach. It mainly discussed an open-source Another article [52] discussed the communication support with respect to Project-Based Learning of Software Development (PBL-SD) and identified that studies are more inclined towards using existing tools instead of developing new ones. A research [66] identified the non-uniformity of teaching methods used by the instructors for teaching PM to the students. This study mentioned the need to use modern teaching methodologies but did not discuss them in detail. A study has been [80] conducted, which focused on blended learning but it did not address the limitations of the approach or the problems faced by the instructors or the learners.
However, this study performed a comprehensive review of recent studies conducted to provide solutions to PME problems and modify existing methodologies to enhance the learning experience. The novelty of this work is that we have considered the curriculum while assessing the existing approaches and presented a taxonomy of BL components, which will assist instructors to identify their impact on enhancing the teaching quality. This paper also defines a model to reduce the burden on both instructors and the students and enables students to learn PM while implementing practically. Moreover, the challenges and gaps have been identified in existing teaching methodologies. Lastly, guidelines to instructors have been proposed and future directions have been provided.

III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
SLR is the selected methodology for conducting this research. Systematic reviews lay out a stepwise process for gathering, analyzing, and selecting primary articles from all existing studies in the topic [53]. For impartial collection of data and presentation of assessed and extracted findings, the standards for SLR provided by [54] and [55] in 2004 are followed for this work. Figure 1 represents the research process used to conduct this study. The steps involved for conducting the SLR are 1) stating the research objectives 2) defining the research questions 3) formulating the search strategy (and strings) 4) filtering and papers classification 5) finalizing the including and exclusion criteria 6) data extraction and review [56].

A. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES (RO)
The central concern behind this study is to analyze the procedures of teaching project management in educational institutes, approaches that are being followed and how much up to the mark they are. This research is not just restricted here; it is also conducted to measure the impacts of blended learning in terms of project management and to evaluate the PME methods. This work is carried out to assess if the followed PME methods are focused on modern standards and curricula of project management or not. Gamification is one of the modern techniques, which is very effective to help people learn new things. This research also examines how much gamification is effective in terms of project management if it is used to enhance the quality and standards of education.
Following are the research objectives of conducting this study: RO1: Filter out the state-of-the-art approaches that proved effective in teaching project management.
RO2: Measure the impacts of blended learning in terms of project management.
RO3: Assess whether the followed PME methods are focused on modern standards and curricula of project management or not.
RO4: Identify the impact of gamification in enhancing the quality and standards of education in terms of project management.
RO5: Identify the essential components of BL and their impact on PME to assist instructors.
RO6: Determine the challenges and gaps with respect to project management education.
RO7: Provide guidelines for the instructors with a focus on improving the effectiveness of the learning procedure.

B. RESEARCH QUESTIONS (RQ)
Initially the research questions regarding project management education are developed to conduct the research. Research questions along with the motivation behind each question is mentioned in Table 1. These research questions would enable us to identify the discussed approaches, their validations  along with the impact of gamification and blended learning on Project Management Education [57].

C. SEARCH SCHEME
In an SLR, the formulation of a search plan is an important part since it allows to find and collect potentially important researches (published articles) in the field of interest. It involves the formulation of the search query, identifying the sources from which the data is required to be collected for the literature review, and defining the inclusion and exclusion plan to collect the relevant papers for the study, and eliminating the rest. Evaluation criteria are set based on different aspects to assess the papers.

1) SEARCH STRING
Search string is generated by using the keywords to explore and collect the relevant studies using the digital databases. Keywords are identified and then classified as Primary, Secondary and Additional keywords. Different databases have been searched using the combinations of keywords, shown as Listing 1, to gather the related research work that has been conducted from January 2015 to January 2022. Figure 3 illustrates the complete selection process.
Multiple combinations of primary, secondary and additional keywords are created using logical ''AND'', ''OR'' and ''NOT'' boolean operators. The primary keywords are used as identifiers to limit the search results to those articles that are relevant as per the investigating areas of this study. Secondary and additional keywords have been effective in summarizing the search results to find publications that are closely related to this research. The generic form of the search string is shown as Listing 2. The finalized search string using keywords from Listing 1 is shown as Equation 1: The research articles collected for this study are gathered from the credible databases listed below: 1) ACM Digital Library 2) Springer Link 3) Research Gate 4) Science Direct 5) IEEE Xplore Table 2 displays the search strings used to extract the relevant publications from the above-mentioned databases along with the filters applied. The papers extracted from these databases are used to conduct the study after filtering through multiple techniques.

3) INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION CRITERIA
Following are the inclusion and exclusion criteria to include and exclude the studies from the initial set of articles obtained from the databases: Inclusion Criteria: IC1: Papers, which are addressing the problems in the current PME.
IC2: Papers discussing gamification (serious games) or curriculum or approaches in context of PME.
IC3: Papers providing approaches and methodologies for PME.
IC4: Papers discussing the impact of blended learning on education.
Exclusion Criteria: EC1: Papers, which are not related to the education of project management.
EC2: Papers that did not focus on analyzing issues and improving approaches of project management education.
EC3: Eliminate papers that mainly focus on the projects' success and failure but not in the context of project management.

D. SELECTION OF RELEVANT PAPERS
The relevant research articles published between January 2015 to January 2022 are selected for this SLR. Numerous articles have been gathered during the primary search but some of them were not related. The filtration of papers has been carried out by following the process mentioned in [58]. Initially the papers have been filtered out based on the titles and abstracts. The abstracts are analyzed carefully to determine relevance to the research questions and main objective of this research.
The repeated papers have initially been eliminated. The papers are then studied in detail in order to filter out the irrelevant studies. The remaining papers are then screened based on the pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria to refine the selection of the searched papers. Finally, after the outlined process execution the remaining publications have been included for the next phase of assessment.

E. QUALITY ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
One of the most important parts of systematic literature review is the quality assessment of the gathered papers/articles based on different aspects. This process is a step forward to strengthen the research's quality. To examine each selected article and determine its quality, a set of specified criteria has been established. As shown in Table 3, two types of criteria are used to assess the quality of the selected articles.
Internal Criteria: To measure the internal quality based on the content of each article.
External Criteria: To measure the external quality based on the publication sources JCR and CORE [42].
Each paper has been scored individually; the total score indicates the sum of scores against each criterion (internal + external). The score range can vary between 0.5 (minimum score) and 5 (maximum score). The papers having a score between 3.5 to 5 are considered as high ranked, the ones that are between 2.5 to 3 as average, and the ones that lie between 0.5 to 2 are considered as low ranked.

IV. DATA ANALYSIS
The papers are assessed based on the defined criteria of assessment. All the articles are carefully investigated to figure out the research questions' answers. The selected articles are first classified and then a classification table i.e., table 5 has been created, based on the following factors: The publication channel and year are identified from the main sources of the research to examine the trends of PME research. The research type reports the types of research, which are used in the selected articles. Approaches that have been used in the selected research articles, are also identified. The articles have also been examined to identify the curricula/standards/BoK that are taken into consideration in PME research articles.
Research type [55] classification includes: • Evaluation Research: The type in which approaches are evaluated using different techniques to recognize the effect on PME. This helps in identifying the impacts and the shortcomings of an approach.
• Experience Papers: The ones that are based on the experience of the author as well as the guideline on how it should be implemented.
• Solution Proposal: Suggests a solution to the newly identified or existing problems.
• Other (Descriptive Research, Exploratory Research, and Opinion Papers) Empirical research type [59], [60], classification includes: • Case Study: An exploratory analysis that explores a concept keeping the idea that the insight gathered from one case can be applied to many others.
• Experiment: Studies in which experiments are conducted using new or existing approaches under controlled environments in which the teachers and students are the main participants.
• Survey: The main goal is to collect data and insights from a sample of individuals selected on a certain criterion designed for the research.
• Review: Past studies or approaches are reviewed in order to identify the trends and other aspects.
• Interview: 1 -1 meetings or remote sessions are conducted as the methodology of the research to identify the pros and cons of an approach. Research approach [53], [61], classification includes: • Model: An illustration of a structure that allows the properties of PME to be examined.
• Guideline: A strategy or method that can be used to deal with uncertainties in project management education.
• Tool: Introduces a tool to improve the educating criteria.
• Framework: Includes a defined set of rules or ideas. • Method: Describes a series of steps to solve a PME problem Blended Learning models are also identified from the selected papers discussing BL approach in terms of their impacts on student's satisfaction and optimizing the learning outcomes. The models identified by [133] are used to classify the filtered articles, which include: • Mixed Model: Knowledge is delivered by both online and offline means. Reading material is released by teachers and students discuss them in class through small lectures. Peer reviews and assessment are also included in this model.  Curricula is another criterion considered as part of the systematic analysis. Papers that discussed curricula have been identified in Table 5. Its classification is: CCCS, CCSE, SWEBOK, SEEK, IT2008, CS2013, ISO Standards, PMBOK or Other. Another parameter to examine is the Gamification. It has also been identified which papers are focused on Gamification (digital or non-digital games) as an advanced teaching method. The quality scoring criteria numbered as 1 to 5 in Table 3 are labelled as 'a' to 'e', respectively in Table 5.

A. QUALITY ASSESSMENT SCORE
According to the previously defined scoring criteria (internal & external), the papers are assessed and scored. After conducting the complete evaluation of the 70 articles, it has been found that only 13% of the articles are ranked as low and 27% articles as average. The remaining 60% are ranked above average. Figure 4 exhibits a visual representation of the articles ranking based on the internal and external scores.

V. ASSESSMENT OF RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Total 70 papers are analyzed considering the research questions as described above in Table 1. The empirical types, approaches used for research, and the types of research are identified for all the filtered articles. The curricula discussed/followed in the research articles are also identified during the assessment process. Each paper is scored by considering the research questions.
The primary concern of this research question is to identify the various empirically validated methodologies that are used to teach project management. These papers are analyzed on the basis of empirical methodology used in selected papers.
The publication years considered to select the articles for this review ranged between January 2015 and January 2022. Distribution of the selected papers based on the publication year is represented in Figure 5. It depicts the frequency distribution of identified studies over the time of 2015 -2022, with a linear increase towards PME per year before 2020. Out of the 70 articles that are filtered out, 24.2% are published in 2019, 22.8% in 2018, and 21.4% in 2017. Figure 5 clearly shows that the trend of conducting research  In order to identify the methodologies used to perform research and explore different project management techniques in education, an analysis is performed which is reflected in Table 4. Major techniques used in project management education are experiments and surveys. The papers mainly performed experiments to evaluate existing approaches as well as proposed solutions of the stated problems. After these, the next highlighted approach is case study where experiments are performed. Around 38% of the papers lacked empirical validation.
The approaches used in the filtered papers are identified as tools, guidelines, models, methods, frameworks or others. These statistics are shown below in Figure 6. 27% of the total papers used methods, 18% used tools and another 18% used frameworks as their approach towards the research. With respect to solution papers, out of the 70 papers 10% proposed tools and 5% proposed frameworks as the suggested approach to resolve issues in project management education. With respect to evaluation research, out of the 70 papers 19 papers proposed methods and 13 papers posed tools and framework each, as the recommended approach to improve and make PME effective. Experience papers are also identified using approaches of framework, guideline, and method.
From the statistics obtained after evaluating the papers it is revealed that almost 39% of the papers are not empirically The concept of the blended learning approach refers to combining the traditional classroom structure with elevated online learning [62]. Some main methods used for implementing blended learning include role-play, monitoring, rotation, flex, gamification or online labs etc. Blended learning proves effective for addressing a significant amount of course work with independent and committed students. One may be able to make the most of a combined home based and class-based effort by incorporating guidelines and blended learning components. But it proves challenging when it comes to convincing students to take responsibility of their own education. 14 out of 70 papers discussed the blended learning approach for teaching. Multiple BL models are identified while examining the research papers [133].
Most of the studies used the mixed BL model, which combines advanced online and the traditional face-to-face educational practices. Students are provided upcoming lecture topic to do their own research before attending the lecture. This approach minimized the time of face-to-face lectures and helped to get clarities on the difficult topics. Figure 7 presents the statistics of BL models applied in PME.
The selected papers investigated different aspects and limitations of implementing BL settings for educating students. These observations have been listed in Table 6. Some researchers integrated other approaches like online education or problem/project-based models with BL setting in order to improve the learning and teaching practices.
It has been revealed that using multiple aids like videos, case studies, discussions, guest lectures, quizzes, workshops and presentations keeps students focused and provides multiple learning and exploring opportunities. The learning does not just limited to classrooms as the BL broadens the scope of learning in three phases: during the class, before the class, and after the class. Some of the studies are limited to specific subjects so this point can be explored in future research to find if blended learning is optimal for all types of courses. Some of the limitations like issues with permissions, access and copyrights are identified in past research. Further limitations and alternatives to those limitations need to be explored in depth.

RQ3). ARE THE PME METHODS PUBLISHED IN LITERATURE BASED ON CURRICULA, STANDARDS, OR BOK OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
After assessing all the selected papers, it is concluded that out of 70 only 21 papers, which becomes 30% of the filtered papers, took curricula, standard, or BoKs into account. ISO, ACM/IEEE-CS and PMBOK are the main standards that have been followed by the researchers in order to conduct their research. Figure 8 shows that out of these 21 papers 45% focused on PMBOK and 23% focused on ISO (ISO 10006 and ISO 21500) which adds up to be 70% of the total that considered curricula while designing approaches to enhance PME.
Some papers identified the need and suggested the modifications required in the curricula. The traditional classroom models are usually instructor-centric, to improve teaching in the PME courses the curriculum needs to be reformed in a way that the courses become more student-centered [82], [100]. Both novel and modified methodologies are proposed to incorporate BL and gamification in PME courses but some of these methods have not been standardized yet. More experiments need to be conducted in order to define and examine the standards, which could result in refining the PME. In addition, the advanced approaches or methodologies need to be standardized and should be part of the curriculum in order to optimize the learning outcomes [82], [86].
A few studies enlightened the importance of a student's background knowledge and preference of learning methods should be considered while designing the course curriculum and content [82]. The students' input while designing the content could be a step forward towards improving the whole learning experience and can add to the students' satisfaction.

RQ4). WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF GAMIFICATION TO IMPROVE THE PME PROCESS?
Many studies have been published in the last few years, which employed gamification as a tool for PME. Gamification played a vital role towards enhancing the practical experience by enabling the students to practically implement their knowledge in different scenarios [100], [107]. It has also been determined that the gamification also helps PM students to identify their failings, which assists them in improving for future and performing better than their previous experience. It helps them identify their mistakes and provides guidelines about what not to repeat [95], [96]. [68] provided an experimentally proven comparison between gamification and traditional educational approaches depicting the pros of gamification in PME. [68], [71], presented that the rewards like points, scores, levels can be of great assistance in motivating students towards working on difficult projects. VOLUME 10, 2022    [122], [129] highlighted that the serious games and computer-based simulations are strong tools that can be used in place of traditional learning to promote knowledge, perseverance, generate motivation, and ensure learner's engagement. They make it easier to use technical resources to create new utilitarian, communal, and enjoyable activities. The learner's motivation and optimistic attitude have a positive impact on perceiving the knowledge. The [69], [78] and [100] contributed to PME by elaborating the ProDecAdmin, which enables the educators to design the game scenarios themselves. This would help in enhancing the capabilities of the students. It can be useful to support the teaching of knowledge areas including cost, scope, and schedule management as well as improving social skills and enhancing engagement. [113] analyzed both non-digital as well as digital games (SCRUMIA, PMDome, and PM Master), in order to develop soft skills like teamwork, fill the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical implementation and cover knowledge areas like human resources, time, scope, and quality management. Figure 9 shows the knowledge areas that are covered in the selected papers using different gamification techniques.
Researchers also pointed out that the students prefer games with higher complexity levels over simpler games. Project management games are popular among students who prioritize humor, aesthetics, and collaboration. Simulation exercises are preferred by those who appreciate clarity and accessibility [95], [108], [114]. According to the findings, the growing number of serious games with sustainable development suggests a preference among academics for their use as instructional tools to incorporate sustainable development concepts [96], [114]. The obtained results provide evidence of information gain as well as student satisfaction with the experience. [107] showed that use of gamification resulted in the retention of contributor's engagement, and a 30% boost in learner's competence.
In conclusion, the purpose of gamification and game's design is compiled under the consideration of mainly two novel ideas; the analytical foundation of course and intuitive determination of the problem in a robust way. It is intended to improve the cognitive abilities of the students, rather than exhausting for long hours in order to produce some fruitful strategy to develop effective project management skills [134], [135]. The instructors and students work in closed coordination during the exploration phase of the game scenario (program). Each time a bug is encountered, the programming team should mend the program in real time.
The ultimate goal of gamification is to provide real world scenarios where the participants can gain hands-on experience, practice their theoretical knowledge, and polish the skills like problem identification, planning, communication, teamwork, collaboration, cost and budget management, and risk analysis, which are the significant skills of project management. The feedback from the peers and the instructors helps in identifying one's mistakes. The real time experimentation and feedback drive the whole operation. Principally, the design of the scenarios, experience of the participants, runtime decisions, amendments in the program and general evolutions of concepts have been set off in the research articles.
Some studies revealed limitations of using gamification, which indicate maintaining balance between the traditional learning methods and use of interactive games to improve the educational process of project management. It is also noticed that simulations add up to more screen time for students, which can affect them physically. Furthermore, more inclination towards the serious games can easily deviate them from the actual goal that is learning. Whereas the evaluating criteria of gamification has its pros it has a few cons too including the increase of competition and promoting the concepts of winner and losers which can eventually become the reason of demotivation instead of motivating.
It is identified that multiple research articles brought up different methodologies in gamification to improve skills development and covering knowledge areas of PM. The PM knowledge areas have their own importance during the life cycle of a project. Some of the articles covered knowledge while designing game scenarios while implementing gamification while some suggested improvements in existing games (digital or on digital) to enhance the knowledge delivery and cover more PM knowledge areas. In the past research, the schedule, cost, communication and risk management have been enfolded and their learning and practical implementations have been discussed. But it has been noticed that procurement and stakeholder management has been neglected by the fellow researchers. There is a need to design advanced simulation games that are based on multiple projects using virtual or augmented realities with more admin side controls for the instructors to customize the scenarios for the participants and to cover the less focused knowledge areas.

VI. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
The main concern behind this review is to examine the existing verified approaches as well as the impact of advanced methodologies including gamification and blended learning. Total 70 papers have been selected from different databases based on predefined searching and filtering criteria. Almost 69% of the papers selected to conduct the review are from 2017, 2018 and 2019 which confirms that noteworthy contributions for PME have been made in these years. Journals are the dominant publication channel as 58.5% of the papers are from journals and 41.5% of the publications are from conferences, books or workshops.
Many of the papers evaluated the existing approaches and methodologies and others proposed solutions to existing problems. The iteratively enhancing program syllabus and its repercussions in the real-world scenarios is an intrinsically tiring and slow process. The motivation of this review is to bridge the gaps between what is being done with respect to project management education and evaluate the emerging methodologies like BL and Gamification. In an official academic setting, it is difficult to implement changes on the go but systemic uplifting may provide a better path with feedback from students working in the industry and teachers reviewing such results. In the end, it will be a matter of finding an effective strategy to implement the model in order to minimize the lag in the transition process.
Some articles examined the BL models to teach PM, while others combined it with different approaches, such as the project-based learning model or online models. The concept of flipped classrooms has become popular because of the fact that it makes students responsible of their own learning. Blended learning emphasizes collaborative work among students to learn something new with no academic edge. It helps in enhancing the skills such as commitment to the cause, time management, responsible planning, and persistence. The key impact that has been noticed in most of the research is the increase in students' focus.
It is challenging for the instructors to develop such a setting where they make students independent learners and responsible for their own growth. Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is widely accepted during the time of pandemic since 2019, but the disadvantage of this technique is that the participants feel frustrated due to less human interaction. This results in lack of trust and cooperation among students. The students' initial motivation to enroll in a BL course highly relates to the impact of this mode of education on learning. Content permissions and copyright claims are considered as key issues in BL approach. Matrixes and frameworks are provided to improve the BL practices to teach the project management course. Mixed approaches, which include the integration of the models of project-based learning [83], [85] or model of online education [82] have been applied and monitored by a few researchers.
The projects or problems-based learning is a mature method of teaching, which can be coupled with terminal semester projects in order to evaluate the overall understanding of the course outline. The need for the combined project arose in the context of bridging the gap between what students learn in the universities and what they are expected to do in their industrial jobs. The problems in the real-world are neither topic specific nor there are any constraints that the necessary information to implement PM knowledge areas must be presented beforehand. We can cater formally by designing a project encompassing several topics from a number of knowledge areas in a specific subject and programming our gaming platform helping students intuitively develop concepts and evolve from having zero knowledge to problem solvers. The advantages of hands-on learning include: Retention of essential facts and concept in an intuitive manner, enabling instructors to have a bird-eye view of what students are learning, developing effective workflows and work ethics, provide them opportunities to refine collaboration, time, stress and risk management, making decisions and learning from the mistakes and leading skills development. Figure 9 presents the taxonomy of the major components of BL along with their advantages in the learning process.
About 31.5% of the papers discussed Gamification as an approach to teach PM courses. In this approach, the participants demonstrate their skills and knowledge in practical processes and tools. Recurring feedback is provided to assist students, which help them in recognizing their shortcoming and making improvements for the future. The software simulations replace the comprehensive review of documentations and help the stakeholders to give feedback to the organizers. The implemented research design includes the evaluation of existing BL models, examining the use of gamification, identification of challenging areas, and suggestions to redesigning the approaches for better results. In numerous researches, it has been depicted that group discussions, practical implementations of PM knowledge areas, and teaching the peers are more helpful than traditional approaches of delivering lectures and readings. All these aspects are covered in the gamification as students get to experience real world scenarios where they implement their technical knowledge and work in teams. Simulation based experiences are much more effective and intuitive to process by the human minds.
While conducting the review, it has been found that the main focus of the past research is on implementing gamification as a project management teaching tool, which mainly focus on the knowledge areas of schedule, communication, risk, and cost management. Figure 10 shows the frequency of the knowledge areas that are covered by the past research articles. An imbalance has been noticed between the use of gamification for the specific knowledge areas where 23% VOLUME 10, 2022  of the gamification-based papers focused on communication, 3% on procurement and 0 research of gamification is found for the management of stakeholders. Knowledge areas of procurement and stakeholder management have been highly neglected in the past research although they are as important as other knowledge areas of PM. The simulated game encourages students to reflect like a project manager by relating the obstacles they meet in the game to real life scenarios [129].
The evaluating system as per realistic scenarios keeps the students on alert during the whole learning period and it also helps them to connect dots between different concepts intuitively. The evaluation criteria of the gamification scenario prove beneficial in keeping the students competitive and motivated. One downside of gamification is that the instructors often design the games, which is a time-consuming process for them. Another downside is that where evaluation criteria is the reason for a student's motivation it also encourages competition, which arouses the concepts of winners and losers that could deviate the learners from the main objectives of learning.
Previously, we concluded that the effectiveness of learning can be enhanced by incorporating advanced learning methods in traditional classroom settings. A few papers considered curricula, standard or BoKs such as ISO, ACM/IEEE-CS, CS2013 and PMBOK, followed by the different methodologies proposed by other fellow researchers. But some also suggested that modification and improvements are required in existing curricula in order to achieve what the industry requires from project managers. The emphasis on knowledge delivery, interests of the students and industry's stakeholders can be amplified by improving the delivery methods by consulting different course instructors of different knowledge areas.

A. CHALLENGES AND GAPS
Various challenges and gaps have been identified as a result of conducting this review. A lack of suitable or standard methodology to teach PME that could map the industrial requirements to the learning outcomes has been observed. The nature of the course (practical or theoretical), maturity level of the students attending the course or the advancement level of the degree (bachelor's or masters) could be the parameters that can directly influence the selection of the teaching methodology. More work needs to be done to determine the variables that must be analyzed before adopting the methodology for teaching through traditional approach (face-to-face), blended learning (flex, flip, supplemental or mixed model) or gamification.
Assessing the students' prior knowledge and their behaviors is challenging for the instructors. Analyzing these variables can be a valuable step towards deciding the course content and the teaching methodology to adopt in order to maximize the output. We noticed the lack in evaluating the aforementioned aspects while designing the PM course.
BL settings require more time than a traditional face to face classroom environment. Identifying, exploring, learning, and implementing new teaching tools and methodologies is a challenge for any instructor. Preparing interactive course content requires way more effort than traditional lectures [86]. Teacher's knowledge regarding technology is a key element towards implementing the advanced tools or techniques for an effective BL environment with desirable learning outcomes. Therefore, proper guidelines and training via workshops needs to be designed for the instructors in order to assist them in implementing BL settings instead of overburdening them with random options and suggestions from peers or the internet [84].
Assessing and providing timely feedback to each student along with designing game scenarios to fill their learning gaps require more time and efforts from the teachers. The scoring, badges and levels are sometimes motivating but these can also be the reason for initiating competition and deviating students from the actual goal, which is learning [27]. So, providing healthy feedback and keeping the students motivated is also a challenge at the instructor's end. More methods need to be designed for BL settings using which the course content can be made more interactive and motivating for the students in order to develop the skills that are the necessity of the industry nowadays [86].
The need to design new game scenarios for project management students have been observed while evaluating the research articles. The existing studies revealed that the current gamification methodologies are more inclined towards schedule, communication, risk and cost management. Providing practical experience of knowledge areas like project quality, stakeholder, and procurement management need more  attention to make the students familiar with them and establish the required skills.
Gamification is not a new concept but each time any work is done in order to materialize it, some shortcomings of its use are identified. These shortcomings indicate that this approach is less interactive for the students, it is not updating as per the real-time feedback, and lack of interactive graphics and approaches to solve the problem [78]. Instead, these findings are mainly based on the experiences of a few teachers with no input from industrial experts [107], [100]. The standards to apply gamification models to all the knowledge areas of PM still need exploration in order to enhance the learning process to meet the industrial demands [88]. Simulation based games are highly attractive for students but the shortcoming like uncertainties, single scenario based, and resource constraints still need to overcome [129].
PM tools provide better project planning, collaboration, scheduling and remote access to digital resources. The knowledge to use PM tools is an important step to complete a project efficiently and effectively. Another gap that has been identified is that the past studies did not focus on the education of project management tools (such as Asana, JIRA and Bitrix) using advanced approaches.

B. PROJECT CENTRIC MODEL
The motivation behind designing the model, shown in Figure 11, is to emphasize hands-on experiences by deploying the project centric approach in project management education. The purpose is to establish the significant skills of project management in students such as problem identification, planning, teamwork and management, leadership, ownership, risk evaluation, time management and learning advanced tools used by managers in the industry and tracking the progress of the project. All the suggested approaches by the fellow researchers are effective but not sufficient to empower most of the above-mentioned skills. Project based BL settings overburdens the instructors in terms of evaluating the work of all students. A single-project scenario and an overly simplistic external risk model are some of the game's shortcomings. Therefore, we designed this project centric model in order to overcome these issues. The resultant novel model, which this study proposes, links different subjects of the same domain in such a way that the terminal semester project shall require applying all essential concepts and skills of project management. The instructors of two courses (one of them being the PM course) and a guest project manager or team lead from the industry, will design a project for the students in which they will have to complete a designated task following the project management practices. For example, two instructors, one from the Web Development course and the other from the PM course will design a project in which a problem will be given to the students, which they have to solve by providing a web-based solution (application), as well as by applying the project management principles.
This model will allow students to be more focused on one project instead of working on two projects of different courses. Focusing on one project instead of two can prove to be more effective to enhance the learning performances of the students. Another benefit is that students will gather the experience to work in an environment, which is more realistic to the industry where they have to follow PM tools and techniques to design a product or complete a project. The plus side for the teachers is that they will gain a better idea of their learning progress by evaluating their performance in real world situations. The use of PM tools by the students will assist the instructors in evaluating the project's progress as well. The inclusion of a guest either a project manager or a team lead will provide valuable information to the students about the ongoing approaches and challenges.

C. INSTRUCTOR'S GUIDELINES
After reviewing all the papers written by fellow researchers, a few important guidelines for PM course instructors have been provided in order to improve the quality of the overall learning process.
The instructors are required to assess the background knowledge of the students along with their behavioral aspects, which can prove to be more effective while designing the course content as well as to deliver that content. This can be done by asking the students to fill out questionnaires to investigate their prior knowledge about the course contents and their preferred learning techniques. It can assist them with selecting the more appropriate teaching methodologies i.e., Project Based BL, Gamification, Role Play, or Traditional F2F learning.
Another important segment is the selection of the supporting tools as they are the key elements for improvising an effective learning process. Instructors must attend workshops and go through published articles to get updated information about the advanced tools and applications available in the market that can assist them in designing a better learning environment for their students.
While implementing methodologies like BL (online settings), the instructors must define standards at the very beginning of the course such as imposing the time limit to respond to the queries (via emails or messages). Instructors can set reminders using tools, like Google Calendars or via Learning Management Systems used by their departments, for the students to remind them for assignments submissions. The instructor can make short videos in order to answer the common queries of the students instead of replying to them individually.
Instructors can collect anonymous feedback from students on a weekly basis to improve their learning satisfaction and overcome the shortcomings of the learning environment. The anonymity of the students involving in giving feedback enables them to say what they do not feel comfortable otherwise. The feedback can assist the instructors to improve their relationships with students and change the class environment as per the student's views. This can also assist in designing the course content for future classes.
When integrating gamification within project management courses, the instructors need to modify the game scenarios in such ways that maximum number of knowledge areas can be covered especially stakeholder and procurement management, which are identified as the neglected in the past researches. The game scenarios can be designed in VOLUME 10, 2022 collaboration with experienced project managers from the industry. Their experience from industry can be very vital in providing better learning opportunities for the students.
In Gamification and BL settings, it is often highlighted that more time is required by the instructors to design game scenarios, create engaging content, and then give feedback for all the activities. These feedback processes can be very over burdening for the instructors, as they have to prepare the course content for future lectures as well. Therefore, reviews from peer student groups or seniors can be encouraged instead of adding burden on the instructors. Furthermore, the instructors should provide experienced knowledge to the students either by sharing their knowledge of industry's experience or inviting guests from industry. The guest lectures can prove very beneficial in updating the students regarding industrial requirements and the norms that are being followed. Workshops and discussion sessions can be held to make the students aware of different problem scenarios that might occur and different solutions can be discussed through the healthy discussions between the instructors, industrial experts, and the students.

VII. CONCLUSION
This research has been conducted to determine the trends, impacts, and enhancements of BL models, curricula, and gamification in PME by reviewing the empirically verified approaches. The digital libraries have been searched thoroughly using predefined search string to extract the studies in relevance with the main objectives of this study. Resultantly, 70 papers were selected to conduct the review in which evaluation research turned out to be the most used approach type and experiment was the most common empirical type used to validate the approaches and methodologies. Mixed model of BL was highly adopted in the past to improve the learning processes of PME. It helps in increasing the sense of ownership and responsibility among students, encourages participation of students, and reduces the burden on the instructors. It has also been determined that the advanced methodologies need to be standardized and added to the curriculum to improve the learning outcomes and meet industry's expectations of a project manager. In the past, Gamification was used to improve the PME through both digital and non-digital game scenarios that cover the PM knowledge areas and develop the necessary skills in the future project managers. It was revealed that the previous studies of gamification in PME neglected the stakeholder and procurement management, which are highly valuable aspects for the management of a project.
A few challenges and gaps have been identified regarding the methodologies used for PME. A model was presented to improve the BL processes, increase the focus of students, and reduce the effort of both the instructors and the students. This model can be verified empirically in future, as this study didn't measure its effectiveness. We have also presented a taxonomy of BL and its components along with their respective contributions towards enhancing the learning experience and student's satisfaction. Lastly, this work suggested few guidelines to the instructors to fill in some of the gaps and overcome the identified challenges.