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

HUBUNGAN ANTARA PENYESUAIAN DIRI, DUKUNGAN SOSIAL TEMAN SEBAYA DAN REGULASI DIRI DENGAN HASIL BELAJAR MELALUI MOTIVASI BELAJAR BIOLOGI SISWA SMA IMMIM PUTRA MAKASSAR

Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian  ex-post facto yang bersifat kausalitas bertujuan mengetahui hubungan beberapa variabel yaitu variabel eksogen, yakni penyesuaian diri (X1), dukungan sosial teman sebaya (X2) dan regulasi diri (X3) dengan variabel endogen yakni motivasi belajar (Y1) dan hasil belajar Biologi (Y2). Data mengenai penyesuaian diri (X1), dukungan sosial teman sebaya (X2) dan regulasi diri (X3) dengan variabel endogen yakni motivasi belajar (Y1) diperoleh dari angket, sedangkan hasil belajar Biologi (Y2) diperoleh dari dokumentasi nilai hasil belajar Biologi siswa.  Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa penyesuaian diri memiliki hubungan langsung dengan motivasi belajar Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,21, dukungan sosial teman sebaya memiliki hubungan langsung dengan motivasi belajar Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,42 dan regulasi diri memiliki hubungan langsung dengan motivasi belaja Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,37 kemudian penyesuaian diri memiliki hubungan langsung dengan hasil belajar Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,17, dukungan sosial teman sebaya memiliki hubungan langsung dengan hasil belajar Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,12 dan regulasi diri memiliki hubungan langsung dengan hasil belajar Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,33, motivasi belajar memiliki hubungan langsung dengan hasil belajar Biologi dengan koefisien jalur 0,38 sedangkan penyesuaian diri memiliki hubungan secara tidak langsung dengan hasil belajar melalui motivasi belajar Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,14, dukungan sosial teman sebaya memiliki hubungan secara tidak langsung dengan hasil belajar melalui motivasi belajar Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,20 dan regulasi diri memiliki hubungan secara tidak langsung dengan hasil belajar melalui motivasi belajar Biologi siswa dengan koefisien jalur 0,26 sementara kategori motivasi belajar sedang serta hasil belajar berada pada kategori tinggi

Effect of Feedback on Performance in the Lane-Change Test

The Lane-Change Test (LCT) is an easy-to-use methodological tool that has proven useful for researching dual-task driving situations. This paper examines the effect of feedback on LCT performance. Feedback is important for maintaining the focus of attention on the primary (driving) task and providing motivation for learning. An experiment was conducted in which two driver groups performed the LCT with or without end-of-block summary feedback. Results showed that the presence of feedback significantly improved performance, as revealed by lower overall means and lower standard deviations (with practice) of lateral deviation values. We conclude that feedback can have a positive effect on performance in the LCT and, therefore, it may be critical to include such feedback when using this, as well as similar tasks, to investigate dual-task driving situations

You Cannot Have Your Cake and Eat It, too: How Induced Goal Conflicts Affect Complex Problem Solving

Managing multiple and conflicting goals is a demand typical to both everyday life and complex coordination tasks. Two experiments (N = 111) investigated how goal conflicts affect motivation and cognition in a complex problem- solving paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants dealt with a game-like computer simulation involving a predefined goal relation: Parallel goals were independent, mutually facilitating, or interfering with one another. As expected, goal conflicts entailed lowered motivation and wellbeing. Participants’ understanding of causal effects within the simulation was im- paired, too. Behavioral measures of subjects’ interventions support the idea of adaptive, self-regulatory processes: reduced action with growing awareness of the goal conflict and balanced goal pursuit. Experiment 2 endorses the hypotheses of motivation loss and reduced acquisition of system-related knowledge in an extended problem-solving paradigm of four conflicting goals. Impairing effects of goal interference on motivation and wellbeing were found, although less distinct and robust as in Experiment 1. Participants undertook fewer interventions in case of a goal conflict and acquired less knowledge about the system. Formal complexity due to the interconnectedness among goals is discussed as a limiting influence on inferring the problem structure

Metacognition and Motivation: The Role of Time-Awareness in Preparation for Future Learning

In this work, we investigate how two factors, metacognitive skills and motivation, would impact student learning across domains. More specifically, our primary goal is to identify the critical, yet robust, interaction patterns of these two factors that would contribute to students' performance in learning logic first and then their performance on a subsequent new domain, probability. We are concerned with two types of metacognitive skills: strategy-awareness and time-awareness, that is, which problem-solving strategy to use and when to use it. Our data were collected from 495 participants across three consecutive semesters, and our results show that the only students who consistently outperform their peers across both domains are those who are not only highly motivated but also strategy-aware and time-aware

Feedback for writing or writing for feedback?

Writing has been seen as a problem to many of students and learning to write fluently has been the most difficult of the macro-skills for all languages. From academic writing point of view, drawing attention to the constant needs to draft and revise can be considered one of the important ways to encourage students to be responsible for making improvements themselves. The best way to learn how to write is to be evaluated continuously across writing. Here feedback plays an important role in writing process. Considering the problems in writing classes, the aim of this study was to investigate a training procedure through which Language learners can develop self-confidence, be motivated, improve the quality of essays, acquire communicative competence through writing and following feedbacks. This study is triple phased study and the first phase comprised students’ attitude about giving and receiving feedback. The study was conducted for 22 3rd grade female ELT students of UFUK University in Turkey. An attitude questionnaire was administered to elicit students` thoughts about the effectiveness of using feedback in writing classes. The ideas expressed through the questionnaire revealed that ELT students has mostly positive attitude toward using teacher-feedback in the case of getting useful points, learning from it, thinking about it before writing, finding it motivated, and making modifications in their writings

Competential feedback effects on stundents' performance (scientific reasoning), motivation and metacognition

Kompetenzielles Feedback entspricht der Leistungsbewertung und -rückmeldung in Relation zu den Stufen eines Kompetenzmodells. In den vier Teilstudien der vorliegenden Dissertation wurde kompetenzielles Feedback mit einer Kontrollgruppe ohne Feedback (Studien 1 und 2) sowie mit anderen Feedbackarten wie sozialem Feedback (Studie 2) und internem Feedback (Studien 3 und 4) verglichen. Im Vergleich zu den jeweiligen Kontrollbedingungen zeigten sich in allen Studien positive Effekte kompetenziellen Feedbacks auf die Performanz der Lernenden (wissenschaftliches Denken) sowie auf die Motivation (Interesse und Kompetenzerleben, Studie 1 und 2), auf die Genauigkeit der Selbsteinschätzung (Studien 2 und 3) und auf die wahrgenommene Feedbackeffektivität (Studie 4). Außerdem wurden die Genauigkeit der Selbsteinschätzung (Studien 2 und 3) und die wahrgenommene Feedbackeffektivität (Studie 4) als Mediatorvariablen des Feedbackeffekts auf Performanz identifiziert.Competential feedback is defined as the evaluation of students’ achievements in relation to competency levels of a domain-specific competence model. Four studies investigated competential feedback effects compared to a control condition without any feedback (studies 1 and 2) and to other feedback conditions, such as social feedback (study 2) and internal feedback (studies 3 and 4). In all studies, results show beneficial competential feedback effects on students’ performance (scientific reasoning). Beyond that, students with competential feedback were more interested and perceived themselves as more competent (studies 1 and 2), self-evaluated their performance judgements more accurately (studies 2 and 3), and perceived their feedback information as more effective compared to the respective control conditions. Accuracy of performance judgments and perceived feedback effectiveness mediated the identified feedback effects on performance