Motivating children to learn effectively: exploring the value of intrinsic integration in educational games

The concept of intrinsic motivation lies at the heart of the user engagement created by digital games. Yet despite this, educational software has traditionally attempted to harness games as extrinsic motivation by using them as a sugar coating for learning content. This article tests the concept of intrinsic integration as a way of creating a more productive relationship between educational games and their learning content. Two studies assessed this approach by designing and evaluating an educational game called Zombie Division to teach mathematics to 7- to 11-year-olds. Study 1 examined the learning gains of 58 children who played either the intrinsic, extrinsic, or control variants of Zombie Division for 2 hr, supported by their classroom teacher. Study 2 compared time on task for the intrinsic and extrinsic variants of the game when 16 children had free choice of which game to play. The results showed that children learned more from the intrinsic version of the game under fixed time limits and spent 7 times longer playing it in free-time situations. Together, these studies offer evidence for the genuine value of an intrinsic approach for creating effective educational games. The theoretical and commercial implications of these findings are discussed

Children's Health: Evaluating the Impact of Digital Technology. Final Report for Sunderland City Council.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Children’s Health project sponsored by the City of Sunderland Digital Challenge project examined the impact of providing health-focused digital technologies to children aged 11-15 years, in terms of their usage and requirements of such technologies, and their subsequent behavioural changes. The empirical study ran with three groups of six children over a period of seven weeks for each group. A console-based exercise game and an exercise-focused social website were used in the study and the focus was on opportunistic (unstructured/unplanned) exercise. The emergent findings are: • Data collected about physical activity must be more extensive than simple step counts. • Data collection technologies for activities must be ubiquitous but invisible. • Social interaction via technology is expected; positive messages reinforcing attainments of goals are valued; negative feedback is seen as demotivating. • participants were very open to sharing information (privacy was not a concern). • Authority figures have a significant impact on restricting adolescents’ use of technologies. This document reports the how the study was conducted, analyses the findings and draws conclusions from these regarding how to use digital technologies to improve and/or maintain the physical activity levels of children throughout their adolescence and on into adulthood. The appendices provide the detailed (anonymised) data collected during the study and the background literature review

Evaluating First Experiences with an Educational Computer Game: A multi-Method Approach

This paper presents our evaluation approach for a specific case study, namely the evaluation of an early prototype of an educational game with children aged between 12 and 14 years. The main goal of this initial evaluation study was to explore children’s first impressions and experiences of the game on the one hand and to assess the students’ ideas and wishes for the further development of the game on the other hand. The main challenge for the evaluation activities was the selection of the appropriate methodological approach, taking into account children as a special user group. We opted for a combination of different, mainly qualitative and explorative methods that were reported beneficial for work with children in the human-computer interaction (HCI) field. By presenting our multi-method approach, in particular the different steps and procedure within our study, other researchers can get inspirations for follow up activities when evaluating games with children as well as benefit from our experiences in exploring more collaborative methods and methodological combinations

Cognitive and affective perspectives on immersive technology in education

This research explains the rationale behind the utilization of mobile learning technologies. It involves a qualitative study among children to better understand their opinions and perceptions toward the use of educational applications (apps) that are available on their mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. The researchers organized semi-structured, face-to-face interview sessions with primary school students who were using mobile technologies at their primary school. The students reported that their engagement with the educational apps has improved their competencies. They acquired relational and communicative skills as they collaborated in teams. On the other hand, there were a few students who were not perceiving the usefulness and the ease of use of the educational apps on their mobile device. This study indicates that the research participants had different skillsets as they exhibited different learning abilities. In conclusion, this contribution opens-up avenues for future research in this promising field of study.peer-reviewe

How to Explain Cancer to a Child and the Effects of Coloring Therapy in Children with Cancer

Did you know that doodling or coloring in a book can have significant therapeutic effects? It has been studied and proven that art therapy can help with anxiety, depression, and even some diseases such as cancer.1 Although coloring may not be able to cure cancer, it can make coping with it more manageable.1 When a child who has cancer is waiting to be seen in a doctor’s office or at the hospital, a coloring book can keep his or her mind off of the diagnosis, provide entertainment, and elicit a relaxing mindset. This coloring book could also have a storyline incorporated that explains cancer to children in a way that is easy to understand and gentle. Furthermore, there is an entire field of art therapy and professional associations dedicated to research around benefits in art therapy for patients. Games can be used to take children’s minds off of cancer as well. There are some cancer art therapy and children’s books already available, but through this research project, I studied specifically what resources are currently available (books, coloring books, and games), and ultimately created a new resource to fill the gaps for children around cancer

Game Transfer Phenomena in video game playing: a qualitative interview study

Video game playing is a popular activity and its enjoyment among frequent players has been associated with absorption and immersion experiences. This paper examines how immersion in the video game environment can influence the player during the game and afterwards (including fantasies, thoughts, and actions). This is what we describe as Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP). GTP occurs when video game elements are associated with real life elements triggering subsequent thoughts, sensations and/or player actions. To investigate this further, a total of 42 frequent video game players aged between 15 and 21 years old were interviewed. Thematic analysis showed that many players experienced GTP, where players appeared to integrate elements of video game playing into their real lives. These GTP were then classified as either intentional or automatic experiences. Results also showed that players used video games for interacting with others as a form of amusement, modeling or mimicking video game content, and daydreaming about video games. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate how video games sometimes triggered intrusive thoughts, sensations, impulses, reflexes, optical illusions, and dissociations

Physical literacy: Importance, assessment and future directions

Physical literacy (PL) has become a major focus of physical education, physical activity and sports promotion worldwide. PL is a multifaceted conceptualisation of the skills required to fully realise potentials through embodied experience. Substantial financial investments in PL education by governments are underpinned by a wide range of anticipated benefits, including expectations of significant future savings to healthcare, improved physical and psychological well-being of the population, increased work-force productivity and raised levels of expertise in sport and exercise participation. However, disappointingly, scientific evidence showing the efficacy of PL interventions to successfully meet such high expectation is limited. We suggest that contradictions in research findings are due largely to limitations in movement assessment batteries and consequent discrepancies between measurements used to assess the immediate outcomes of PL programmes. Notably, there is no robust empirical tool for evidencing skill learning in the physical movement component of PL, education and this presents a serious limitation to the design of, and claims that can be made for, such interventions. Considering the parameters of proficient PL skills and the limitations of current evaluation instruments, possible future directions for developing empirical measures of PL movement skills are presented

An Investigation Of Digital Games Features That Appeal To Young Females And Males

This research is part of an attempt to address the well-known problem of female underrepresentation in computer science education and industry. This problem starts between ages 11 to 14 and gets progressively worse in what is often referred to as the “shrinking pipeline effect”. There has been considerable research into the causes of the shrinking pipeline and attempts to halt or reverse it. In spite of this, the causes remain unclear and there is evidence that the problem may be worsening. Digital games are increasingly used in education because of their ability to engage and motivate young learners. Unfortunately, digital games used in the teaching of IT and computer science have been found to appeal less to females than males. This is in spite of the fact that digital games intended for entertainment, as opposed to education, are now very popular with girls. There has been some research into this issue, however more is needed, especially into what game features do and do not appeal to girls at the age that the pipeline starts to shrink. The study reported here aims to identify what characteristics of digital entertainment games appeal to young females and males. The results can be used to guide educators, researchers and game developers and provide criteria for evaluating the suitability of digital educational games for use with specific age groups and genders. We used open card sort with participants aged 11 to 14 to explore their attitude to a range of digital entertainment games. Open card sort allows participants to categorise items in ways that are meaningful to them. There were 32 participants (24 females and 8 males) from four schools in south-east England. They were shown video clips of ten popular games. The participants were then given ten cards, each representing one of the games and asked to sort them into categories based on shared characteristics. This process elicited 131 features (95 from the females and 36 from the males). The data was analysed to identify the features that were a) most significant and b) most appealing to the participants. The findings indicate that there are some gender differences in which game features are perceived as most significant. Some features, such as game action, are significant to the males whereas others, such as game levels, are significant to the females. Interestingly, some features that both genders find significant have different degrees of appeal for example “fun” and “violence”. We are currently using the findings in an experiment with 480 young people. Two digital educational games have been created: one includes features found to appeal to young females and the other includes the opposite or neutral features. The results of this experiment will be used to validate the findings of the initial investigation and form the basis for a framework to facilitate the inclusion of characteristics that appeal to specific groups in educational games and other software

OPINIONS OF FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS ABOUT DIGITAL GAMES

Today, it is observed that children with special needs first eliminate their loneliness with digital technologies when they feel lonely. Families are unable to establish a healthy communication for their children with special needs. In this study, the opinions and suggestions of the families of children with special needs with digital game addiction were evaluated, the problems experienced with their children were mentioned and solution suggestions were presented. The working group of the study consists of families with children with special needs.  The study group of the research was 5. A total of 26 parents with children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD), learning difficulties or mild intellectual disability who were studying in the classroom formed a total of. In this research, phenomenology, one of the qualitative research patterns, was used. When the communication of families with children with special needs with game addiction was evaluated, the participants stated that they had difficulty communicating with their children. A small part of the participants also found that their children have addictions to digital tools. In order to prevent digital game addiction, the majority of families have stated that they have imposed a ban on their children's access to digital games.In addition, families have stated that they apply the reward and punishment method to their children to stay away from digital technologies. The vast majority of the participants had children with digital game addiction, and a small number of the participants received professional support to prevent this addiction. Failure in children's lessons has caused anger in children.  The failures of children have brought with them many negative factors. Parents have stated that children tend to be violent when deprived of digital tools.  Key Words: Special needs, digital technologies, Digital gamin