There are two key lines of research studying the effects that educational games have on students’ knowledge acquisition and motivation: one focusing on instructivist pedagogical strategies (placing students in the role of players) and one aiming constructionist ones (placing students in the role of educational game designers). There are scarce studies comparing the two strategies, with initial results indicating that the constructionist approach may bring greater benefits.
Our research question is then the following: are there any differences in knowledge acquisition and motivation between students that design educational games and students that play educational games? Our results suggest that a constructionist approach might have a greater impact both on knowledge and motivation. Our paper describes a pilot study focusing on teaching fractions to elementary students using two different pedagogical strategies, instructivist versus constructionist, with videogames as instruction tools, in an informal learning environment.We would like to thank CESIS (Centre for Social Intervention Studies), in particular its team from the project "Percursos Acompanhados", for accommodating the study and making it logistically possible, a special thank you to Isa Monteiro and Marli Godinho for their support and kindness. Thank you also to the participants for attending the activities and their families for authorizing it. Thank you to Rahul Banerjee, research assistant at Center for Game Science, Washington University, and developer of Blockstud.io, for his readiness and kindness in our valuable discussions about the software's limitations and potential. Thank you to Leonor Duarte and Jose Falcao, primary school teachers, for our conversations, and their input on the written tests and games created for the study. Thank you to Jose Duarte and Ana Guedes for our analytical discussions about data treatment and presentation. We would also like to thank Instituto de Educacao of Universidade do Minho and FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology), Portugal, for financing this study.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
