Connecting the dots: Understanding the interrelated impacts of type, quality and children's awareness of design features and the mathematics content learning goals in digital math games and related learning outcomes

Abstract

This study focused on an examination of how type, quality and children's awareness of design features in digital math games, along with an awareness of the mathematics goals of the game, were related to learning outcomes. We conducted a parallel conversion mixed methods study with 45 students in Grades 3 and 4 (ages 9–10). Students participated in clinical interviews using three digital math games. The results suggest a moderated mediation relationship in which the quality of the design features moderated the mediating impact of children's awareness of the game's design features, specifically when the child was aware of the mathematics content learning goal (MCLG) of the game. These findings show how important it is that design features are of high quality in a digital math game, and how this is intertwined with children's awareness of the features and the MCLG. When these variables intertwined in just the right way, the interactions between the children and the digital math game afforded mathematical learning growth.

Patterns of Using Multimodal External Representations in Digital Game-Based Learning

“…Overall, prior research (Ainsworth, 1999; De Bock et al, 2017; Duval, 2006; Goldin, 2003; Hurst et al, 2020; Lesh, 1981; Lesh et al, 1987) revealed the importance of external representations for mathematical learning, but most of these previous studies focused on a conventional learning setting. Recently, research on the field of external representations for mathematical problem solving in DGBL is increasing (Bullock et al, 2021; Duval, 2017; Hung et al, 2014; Moyer-Packenham et al, 2019; 2021), but still scarce.…”

“…Prior research (Bullock et al, 2021; Ke & Clark, 2020; Moyer-Packenham et al, 2019; 2021) suggested that interactions with well-structured MERs in DGBL could enhance students’ abilities to construct a mental model for mathematical problem solving. Specifically, DGBL provides opportunities of translations (i.e., transformations) among different mathematical representations.…”

“…Overall, recent studies have revealed the positive effects of interactions with MERs in DGBL on students’ mathematical problem solving (Bullock et al, 2021; Ke, 2019; Moyer-Packenham et al, 2019; 2021), but few of them investigated how students interact with various MERs. In-depth analyses of how students interact with different MERs in DGBL for mathematical problem solving remain inadequate.…”

“…Recently, a growing body of empirical evidence suggests that digital game-based learning (DGBL) is a natural and dynamic learning platform that improves students’ mathematical performance, by creating a meaningful context-based learning environment with multiple representations of mathematical problems (Bullock et al, 2021; Ke, 2016; Ke & Clark, 2020; Moyer-Packenham et al, 2021; Siew, 2018). These external representations refer to the concrete and visual objects that represent abstract math knowledge in a simulated context.…”

“…Prior research reported that interacting with purposefully designed MERs in DGBL could improve students’ performance of mathematical problem solving (Bullock et al, 2021; Ke, 2019; Moyer-Packenham et al, 2019), performance of mental rotation (Ke, 2019; Ke & Clark, 2020), learning engagement (Moon & Ke, 2020), and mathematics connections (Moyer-Packenham et al, 2019). Thus, we speculate that there is a positive association between the use of MERs in DGBL and students’ mathematical learning outcomes (Moyer-Packenham et al, 2021).…”