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

Can Children Read Evolutionary Trees?

Representations of the “tree of life” such as cladograms show the history of lineages and their relationships. They are increasingly found in formal and informal learning settings. Unfortunately, there is evidence that these representations can be challenging to interpret correctly. This study explored the question of whether children aged 7–11 can read these trees and, if so, what factors influence their understanding. A total of 28 children were shown cladograms with both different content (species and features shown) and form (how branches rotated). Questions required these children to reason about different aspects of cladogram interpretation and to search varying depths of the tree. Overall, children did remarkably well: 56% of their answers were completely correct after only 15 minutes of instruction. The youngest quartile of children performed worse than other ages, but there were no further age differences. Children’s performance was influenced by the content and the depth of tree searched but not by the rotation of the branches. Like adults, they found reasoning about the relatedness of species particularly difficult. Children’s explanations revealed varied insights: from correct semantic interpretation to syntactic interpretation to a variety of misunderstandings. Demonstration of this basic competency provides a foundation from which to design a more extended curriculum for children that uses cladograms to support evolutionary understanding

Learning about viruses:Representing Covid-19

Covid-19 has significantly impacted children's lives, requiring them to process multiple messages with significant emotional, social, and behavioural implications. Yet, the vast majority of these messages solely focus on behaviour. This is an oversight as children and young people can understand the biological properties and mechanisms of viruses when supported appropriately, thereby presenting an important opportunity for educators. However, like many other invisible scientific phenomena, understanding of viruses greatly depends upon how they are represented. Thus, we sought to understand the relative benefits and limitations of different forms for learning about the underlying biology of Covid-19. Applying an embodied learning lens, we analysed pictures, 3d models, gestures, dynamic visualisations, interactive representations, and extended reality identified through a state-of-the art-review. In so doing, we address the affordances and limitations of these forms in general and variation within them. We used this to develop a representational checklist that teachers and other adults can use to help them support children and young people's learning about the biology of Covid-19

Intrinsic fantasy: motivation and affect in educational games made by children

The concept of intrinsic fantasy has been considered central to the aim of usefully applying the positive affect of computer games to learning. Games with intrinsic fantasy are defined as having “an integral and continuing relationship with the instructional content being presented”, and are claimed as “more interesting and more educational” than extrinsic fantasy games [1]. Studies of children making educational games have shown they usually create extrinsic games for curriculum learning content. In this study, children were encouraged to create non-curriculum games, more easily distanced from the extrinsic preconceptions of formal schooling. Forty, 7-11 year olds took part in this study (17 boys and 23 girls), designing and making their own games at an after-school club. Despite non-curriculum learning content, no more intrinsic games were created than in previous studies. The children failed to create their own pedagogical models for non-curriculum content and did not see the educational value of intrinsic fantasy games. The implications for transfer and learning in intrinsic games are discussed whilst the definition of intrinsic fantasy itself is questioned. It is argued that the integral relationship of fantasy is unlikely to be the most critical means of improving the educational effectiveness of digital games

Learning by constructing self-explanation diagrams

The self-explanation effect (whereby students generate explanations to themselves as they are studying) has been shown to enhance learning in many domains. Recent research has demonstrated that the way that material is presented influences the self-explanation effect. Ainsworth & Loizou (2003) presented students with information about the circulatory system in either text or diagrams and prompted them to self-explain. Diagrams students outperformed text students at post-test, generated more self-explanations and their learning was more dependent on self explaining. The current study sought to explore if these same benefits would ensue if students constructed self-explanations in diagrammatic form. Consequently, twenty-four subjects were given information about the human circulatory system to learn. Half of them were given the information in the form of diagrams and asked to write down their self-explanations. The other half were given the information in the form of text and asked to construct their own self-explanation diagrams as they self-explained. The results showed that students in both conditions learnt and at post-test performed identically on every measure of learning. They also generated the same number and quality of explanations. The only ways these two groups differed is in the amount of information they chose to translate across representations. Text students included almost twice as much information in their pictures as diagram students in their summaries. Furthermore, the amount of information translated predicted learning outcomes whereas the number of self-explanations did not. Overall, these results showed that by generating their own diagrammatic self explanations while studying, students can overcome the previously reported text disadvantage. It also suggests that some of the some of the benefits of self-explanation may be due to translating information over representations of different forms

Applying the DeFT Framework to the Design of Multi-Representational Instructional Simulations

Learning environments use multiple external representations (MERs) in the hope that learners can benefit from the properties of each representation and ultimately achieve a deeper understanding of the subject being taught. Research on whether MERs do confer these additional advantages has shown that learning can be facilitated but only if learners can manage the complex tasks associated with their use. Our approach examines how the design of learning environments influences the cognitive task demands required of the learner with the longer term goal of using these findings to develop more adaptive and supportive multi-representational environments. In this paper, we begin by summarising the key features of the DeFT framework and then illustrate how such a framework can be used to classify existing systems. The main body of the paper describes the architecture of an instructional simulation that embodies DeFT. Finally, we conclude by illustrating the research questions we hope that experiments with this system can answer

Collaborative knowledge building with shared video representations

Online video has become established as a fundamental part of the fabric of the web; widely used by people for information sharing, learning and entertainment. We report results from a design study that explored how people interact to create shared multi-path video representations in a social video environment. The participants created multiple versions of a video by providing alternative and interchangeable scenes that formed different paths through the video content. This multi-path video approach was designed to circumvent limitations of traditionally linear video for use as a shared representation in collaborative knowledge building activities. The article describes how people created video resources in collaborative activities in two different settings. We discuss different modes of working that were observed and outline the specific challenges of using the video medium as shared representation. Finally we demonstrate how an analysis of collaborative dimensions of the shared multi-path video representation can be applied to discuss the design space and to raise the discourse about the usefulness of these representations in knowledge building environments

Multi-modal, multi-source reading: a multi-representational reader’s perspective

In this commentary, I review the five articles that comprise the Special Issue titled ‘Towards a model of multi-source, multi-modal processing”. The papers are discussed in terms of how they help us understand the “second generational” issues of reader characteristics, representational choices, task demands and assessment approaches. The commentary concludes by anticipating themes for future work that are common to all the papers’ concerns

Designing and evaluating multi-representational learning environments for primary mathematics

This thesis reports the design and evaluation of multi-representational learning environments that teach aspects of number sense. COPPERS is concerned with children's belief that mathematical problems can have only a single correct answer. CENTS addresses the skills and knowledge required for successful computational estimation. Although, there is much multi-representational software and a significant body of research which suggests that learning with multiple external representations (MERs) is beneficial, little is known about the conditions under which MERs promote effective learning. To address this, a framework was proposed for considering MERs. It consists of a set of dimensions along which multi-representational software can be described and specifies learning demands of MERs. This framework was used to generate predictions about the effectiveness of different multi-representational systems. Experiments investigated children's performance in multiple solutions and computational estimation before they received direct teaching and tested whether the learning environments could help children develop these skills. Each experiment examined how specific aspects of the learning environments contributed to learning outcomes. Experiments with COPPERS showed that children's pre-test performance was generally poor. Improved post-test performance on multiple solutions tasks occurred when children gave substantially more answers on the computer than their pre-test base-line. They rarely chose this strategy for themselves. It was found that providing a tabular representation of solutions in addition to the familiar row and column representation improved learning. Estimation is difficult for primary school children, but limited teaching led to substantial improvements in strategies and accuracy of estimates. Three experiments with CENTS addressed the effects of MERs on learning. When representations were too difficult to co-ordinate, then either children did not improve at understanding the accuracy of estimates, or focused their attention upon a single representation. Additionally, varying how information was distributed across representations influenced how representations were used. These experiments show that when considering learning with MERs, it is not sufficient to consider the effects of each representation in isolation. Behaviour with representations changes depending on how they are combined. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the design of multi-representational learning environments

Personal Inquiry: lessons learned

The paper describes a school trial carried out to support inquiry learning between formal and informal settings supported by personal mobile technology. The aim of the school trial was to explore how a first version of the PI Toolkit facilitates secondary school students in performing a personally relevant scientific inquiry both in a science classroom as well as at home. An analysis of classroom video and interviews has resulted in a set of incidents from which we have derived design guidelines and challenges for implementing technology-supported inquiry learning where personal technology is used and within which personally relevant investigations are conducted by students