Reducing digital divide effects through student engagement in coordinated game design, online resource use, and social computing activities in school

Abstract

Participating in online social, cultural, and political activities requires digital skill and knowledge. This study investigates how sustained student engagement in game design and social media use can attenuate the relations between socioeconomic factors and digital inequality among youth. This study of 242 middle and high school students participating in the Globaloria project shows that participation eliminates gender effects, and reduces parent education effects in home computer use. Further, students from schools with lower parent education show greater increases in frequency of school technology engagement. Globaloria participation also weakens the link between prior school achievement and advanced technology activities. Results offer evidence that school-based digital literacy programs can attenuate digital divide effects known to occur crosssectionally in the general U.S. population.

Constructionist Gaming: Understanding the Benefits of Making Games for Learning

“…Results are promising in not only getting students more effectively collaborating around personally meaningful projects but also increasing students' self-efficacy with digital technology. Reynolds and Chiu (2015) studied two classes of middle school students (sixth and seventh grade, respectively), as well as two groups of middle school students at local Boys & Girls Clubs, using Globaloria activities over the course of 1 year. They found that participants' sense of self-efficacy improved across all four settings based on pre-and postintervention surveys.…”

The Effectiveness of Online Simulation with GDL and PBL toward Students’ Digital Literacy Skill

“…In guided discovery-based learning, scaffolding and facilitation are distributed to students among tools, artifacts, and social resources from the learning environment (Rebecca Reynolds & Chiu, 2016). The source of information is provided throughout the GDL and shows that students are more involved with previous units that do not have a curriculum (R. Reynolds & Leeder, 2017).…”

Information Uses and Learning Outcomes During Guided Discovery in a Blended E-Learning Game Design Program for Secondary Computer Science Education

“…All of these factors may influence the extent of "resourcefulness" students and teams evidence in using resources to support their learning, and thus, why schools may show such variation as we see here. For instance, Reynolds & Chiu [31,32] used multi-level analysis modeling to report upon results from two large N survey datasets in two other school years, showing that in addition to school-level differences such as those we see here, individual and team differences also play a role in various outcomes, including changes in student technology use dispositions, and knowledge. Reynolds [28] also finds that team dynamics influence resource uses and such differences appear to contribute outcomes.…”