A meta-analysis with examination of moderators of student cognition, affect, and learning outcomes while using serious educational games, serious games, and simulations

Lamb, Richard; Annetta, Leonard A.; Firestone, Jonah B.; Etopio, Elisabeth

doi:10.1016/j.chb.2017.10.040

Cited by 236 publications

(178 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Serious games imply both opportunities and barriers-both in terms of communication, inclusivity and to some extent regarding their legitimacy when dealing with complex issues [31,32]. While this study demonstrated a positive result on the engagement and interest for climate adaptation for the participating high school students, it also raises question regarding the level of terminology, and to what extent the aspects of the gameplay, in terms of single-player or roleplay mode, as well as the complexity of the feedback system, influenced the game experience.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

et al. 2020

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Serious gaming has gained increasing prominence in climate change communication, and provides opportunity to engage new audiences and new platforms for knowledge co-creation and dialogues. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a serious game on climate adaptation, primarily targeted towards high school students, practitioners and politicians. The game aims to provide an experience of the impact of climate adaptation measures, and illustrates links with selected Agenda 2030 goals, which the player has to consider, while limiting impacts of hazardous climate events. The game design builds on the key goals in Education for Sustainable Development combining comprehensive views, action competence, learner engagement and pluralism. This study draws on game sessions and surveys with high school students in Sweden, and aims to assess to what extent different aspects of the game can support an increased understanding of the needs and benefits of adaptation actions. The results of this study indicate that the game can engage players to reflect upon challenges related to climate adaptation decision making, but also point towards the challenge of including a high degree of complexity which can make it difficult to grasp consequences of individual measures, as well as to link these to the natural variability of the occurrence of extreme climatic events.Sustainability 2020, 12, 1789 2 of 18 mere entertainment such as instructional goals" [6] p. 414, has been addressed in a number of recent studies. Given the complexity of climate adaptation, referred to as a "wicked problem par excellence" [10] (p. 28), scientific knowledge, rivalling social interests as well as ethical consideration need to be recognized, and hence demand new types of educational tools. Enhancing science education by contextualizing the content as socioscientific issues is argued to increase understanding as well as to train ethical reflection and personal judgement needed in modern societies [11,12]. This is also in line with the core of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) that strives for systems thinking and democratic action competence in a world full of conflicting interests [13,14]. In this capacity, serious games can support teachers to strengthen their Education for Sustainable Development as it provides an experience of climate adaptation, based on systems thinking and action orientation. Inspired by these two strategies, we argue that digital games can be a valuable resource in climate communication and education.Climate change games cover a wide range of related topics, such as urban development [15,16], personal action [3], land use models [17], agriculture [18-20], water management [21-25], climate risk attribution [26] and simulations of climate negotiations [27]. In their review of climate adaptation games, Flood et al. [7] present a large number of more recent games with focus on climate adaptation, and discuss their efficiency for "engaging with diverse publics and enable social learning" [7] (p. 18) as well as the role of ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

et al. 2020

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“…A related issue is whether playing educational games and educational apps actually initiates transfer of the content and skills that they are designed to impart (Lamb, Annetta, Firestone, & Etopio, 2018) rather than serving as a vehicle for executing a given game mechanic (i.e., slicing zombies in thirds to illustrate fractions). This consideration has ramifications for how teachers and parents evaluate and select educational apps for instructional use (Lee & Kim, 2015).…”

Section: Transfer Of Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Games as a Context for Children's Cognitive Development: Research Recommendations and Policy Considerations

Blumberg

Deater‐Deckard

Calvert

et al. 2019

Social Policy Report

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We document the need to examine digital game play and app use as a context for cognitive development, particularly during middle childhood. We highlight this developmental period as 6‐ through 12‐year olds comprise a large swath of the preadult population that plays and uses these media forms. Surprisingly, this age range remains understudied with regard to the impact of their interactive media use as compared to young children and adolescents. This gap in knowledge about middle childhood may reflect strong and widely held concerns about the effects of digital games and apps before and after this period. These concerns include concurrent and subsequent influences of game use on very young children's and adolescents’ cognitive and socioemotional functioning. We highlight here what is currently known about the impact of media on young children and adolescents and what is not known about this impact in middle childhood. We then offer recommendations for the types of research that developmental scientists can undertake to examine the efficacy of digital games within the rapidly changing media ecology in which children live. We conclude with a discussion of media policies that we believe can help children benefit from their media use. Our hope is that this review will foster greater investigation of the cognitive socialization, as raised over 20 years ago by developmental psychologist and early games researcher Patricia Greenfield, that digital games serve during the middle childhood period, and childhood more generally.

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“…In order to accomplish this transition from one to the other, VR environments require immersion and realism along with the ability to construct knowledge through interaction. Immersion and realism will allow VR tools to train for similar tasks and reasoning in the real world as found in other studies (Lamb, 2016;Lamb, Annetta, Firestone, & Etopio, 2018). As a result, VR environments provide rich teaching opportunities and help to improve learners' ability to analyze problems and explore new concepts associated with the environment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Immersion can take one of multiple forms: psychological, sensory, and/or physiological (Tan & Nijholt, 2010). The mixture of these three forms of immersion in VR is what increases the learning opportunities in VR (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010;Lamb, Annetta, Firestone, & Etopio, 2018). Immersion in each of these three forms partially arises from the infusion of highly realistic digital content into virtual environments.…”

Section: Immersion In Virtual Realitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies have probed technologies related to VR and its effect on science education regarding; (a) conceptual change (Clark & Mayer, 2016), (b) laboratory work (Freeman, Eddy, McDonough, Smith, Okoroafor, Jordt, & Wenderoth, 2014), (c) science inquiry-based 2 / 13 learning (Crawford, Capps, van Driel, Lederman, Lederman, Luft, & Wong, 2014), (d) scientific argumentation (Choi, Hand, & Greenbowe, 2013), and (e) spatial ability (Lamb, 2016;Lamb, Annetta, Firestone, & Etopio, 2018). The results of these studies are mostly limited to illustrating learners' attitudes related to VR (e.g., satisfaction or perceived usefulness), and only hint at possible improvement in student outcomes related to skill development and content.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Virtual Reality Laboratories: A Way Forward for Schools?

Lamb

Lin

Firestone

2020

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed

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In recent years, the applications of virtual reality (VR) in learning environments has received considerable attention. This attention occurs as a part of a wider trend seen since the early millennium. This trend is that of increasing attention being placed on modes of instruction that can supply greater realism and immersion in the science classroom. VR is used in this study as a digital learning environment support tool. VR is defined as the use of three-dimensional graphic systems in combination with various interfaces to provide the effect of immersion and interaction in computer generated environments. The purpose of this study was to investigate the barriers to content learning and immersion of a VR laboratory designed to replicated hands-on laboratory for a large university system. The primary means for data collection was the use of a combination multiple choice and open-ended survey response in conjunction with interviews. Twelve faculty and 285 students took part in a pilot program testing a VR based laboratory system as a part of an undergraduate life sciences class. Overall, the results suggest the VR system as it is currently implemented is not yet ready for large-scale implementation due to barriers related to immersion and interface in the classroom. This study also provides design recommendations that may assist in the further development for VR use in the classroom in future iterations.

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A meta-analysis with examination of moderators of student cognition, affect, and learning outcomes while using serious educational games, serious games, and simulations

Cited by 236 publications

References 43 publications

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

Digital Games as a Context for Children's Cognitive Development: Research Recommendations and Policy Considerations

Virtual Reality Laboratories: A Way Forward for Schools?

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