Game-construction students experiences of educational games - gaming outcomes and learning outcomes

Abstract

Game-based learning has been a rapidly expanding field in the 21th century, with research reports praising the motivational effects and learning outcomes of games. At the same time there have been doubts on the learning outcomes of even the most seriously designed learning games. The generation that today enrols for university programmes is in general a gaming generation, and game construction students are often so called hard core gamers. What are the game construction students’ experiences of educational games, and what are their perceived learning outcomes? This study is based on student essays on gaming habits and game-based learning outcomes, written by students taking a course on game-based learning. Essays from four course batches have been thematically analysed to answer the two research questions. Findings show that students have a rich experience of various kinds of games, but that they do not make any clear distinction between games developed for educational purposes, and other games. Students also perceive that there are cognitive, behavioural as well as affective learning outcomes from both standard entertainment games, and more serious learning games.

The Impact of Educational Games on Enhancing Elementary Stage Students' Acquisition and Retention of English Vocabulary

“…Also there have been doubts on the learning outcomes of the most seriously designed learning games. The generation that today enrolls for university programs is in general a gaming generation, and game construction students are often so called hard core gamers (Mozelius, 2018).…”

An analysis of undergraduate heavy-video-gaming students : developing technology-enhanced learning-support areas based on gaming and study practices

“…The development of educational games was a small subsection of the literature review. Mozelius (2018) studied the way games were being constructed and how the games actually met the learning outcomes of given courses. Upon examination of 33 essays from the students, the results indicated that often students are reluctant to play educational games.…”

“…However, when the games keep their interest, the game most often provides the learner with some new cognitive knowledge, such as vocabulary. A few games help increase motivation for learning a skill, and finally a few games actually address social behaviors (Mozelius, 2018). While games were found to help cognitive knowledge, motivational engagement, and behavior alterations in isolated education settings, it was difficult to find undergraduate articles that tied recreational video-gaming or eSports gaming to educational outcomes.…”

“…Many articles focused on teens and younger children rather than undergraduate students. Of the articles about undergraduates, educational research was related to gamification of class content (Bursztyn et al, 2017;Davis et al, 2018), measurement of academic performance though factors such as grade point averages (Ellis & Kao, 2019;Maksy & Yoon, 2019), gender (Manero et al, 2017;Yilmaz-Soylu & Bruning, 2016), and game development (Indra et al, 2019;Mozelius, 2018). Research was not focused on the impact that the extracurricular video-game-playing activity has on the skill sets of participants as learners.…”