A Smartphone Game to Promote Self-Learning in Chemistry

Abstract

In Thailand, for most students in high school, remembering the periodic table is an important part of learning chemistry and to pass a university entrance examination in their scientific program. As many students live in the bigger city areas in Thailand, most of them encounter the same problems such as limitations on lesson time, and their involvement in a wide range of high school and extra-curricular activities which reduces the student's study time. Self-learning is one method that has been proven to be effective, convenient, and fast. Presently, there are few effective resources for students to enjoy self-learning. Game-based learning is one of the approaches that has been suggested, but most of them are too difficult to learn how to play, not attractive and not challenging. In this study, a smartphone-based learning game was designed and developed with better level design, including color emotional theory, and quality graphic design to provide a better user experience. The game consists of three stages, and at each stage, a mini-puzzle game is presented which plays a different style with different goals to be achieved. The first stage of the game is to remember the names and symbols of elements. The second stage is to remember the group and period, while the third stage allows students to apply elements to form chemical compounds. The results from an evaluation showed that 96% of 102 students, enjoyed playing the game, 87% said the game was challenging, and 94% remembered at least 3 elements more than before playing. The satisfaction questionnaire demonstrated the benefits of the game-based learning system on self-learning in chemistry.

Pengembangan Media Puzzle Game Materi Gaya Untuk Kelas IV Sekolah Dasar

“…Dari yang telah dijelaskan sebelumnya (Shu & Liu, 2019), belajar melalui permainan tujuannya agar siswa tidak merasa bosan atau jenuh pada saat pembelajaran dan menumbuhkan semangat dalam belajar. Berdasarkan penelitian sebelumnya (Saksrisathaporn & Sribunthankul, 2019), game pembelajaran berbasis smartphone terbukti efektif sebagai media pembelajaran yang menunjukkan manfaat sistem pembelajaran berbasis permainan pada pembelajaran mandiri dalam kimia. Demikian pula penelitian yang telah dilakukan oleh Setyawan et al, (2019) menunjukkan bahwa game edukasi daapatmendorong siswa untuk bermain lebih lama, sehingga dapat mempertahankan fokus belajarnya.…”

A Game-Based Learning Approach to Improve Students’ Spelling in Thai

“…Currently, there are many types of games, such as board games, card games, video games, and digital games [14]. These games can be type constructed as an entertainment game, educational game, gamebased learning, gamebased pedagogy simulationbased games, serious games, etc.…”

“…10, 2020 the learning skills of students as interactive games enable intuitive content to be delivered directly to students through their devices. However, most education gamebased learning is simple in both graphic and level design [14].…”

“…In this case, the 3D game was designed and developed by using Adobe Photoshop and Unity software. The Unity software is a game engine for developing 2dimensional (2D) and 3dimensional (3D) games, which can work on two platforms, Windows and OSX [14]. The popular 2D game name "Gardenarium" by Paloma and Kyler (2017) [24] with the support of KOOP [25] was also made by Unity software.…”