Inexperience in gaming might not be a problem when implementing educational games into classroom

Previous experience with digital games has no effect on how adolescents learn new things by playing #educational games. #serious #games

According to research made by Anna Hoblitz in the University of Paderborn, the previous experience or inexperience in playing digital games does not seem to have an effect on the way adolescents learn new things when playing educational games. Same goes with the attitude they have towards the educational games. Even if adolescents would perceive educational games good or bad they would still be on the same line with each other when it comes to learning. It seems that according to the research the thing that influences the learning process most is the fact how interested the student is in the subject at hand. Not the fact how interested the student is in educational games. This might mean that digital games as an educational medium might not be so far from the other media such as videos or music. They may all be used as an educational tool regardless of the fact that how used is the receiver in using the provided media type.

The research was conducted in a German high school for high school students. Students had to play the digital game Energetika on a couple of physics lessons. The game centered on managing your own country’s energy needs. It was intended for students to learn energy based facts with the serious game. Afterwards and before playing the game, students filled in a form with questions about their gaming habits and opinions based on educational games. Questions of the subject the game was designed to teach were also asked to find out how well the students had learned when playing the game. These results were afterwards combined to get the final results. On top of the previous questions, the students were also asked that how interested they would be to research the subject on their leisure time. This was called expansive learning. Results show that about one third were interested in the subject enough to continue the learning process on their own time. However, results do not show whether the educational game was the reason for this kind of behaviour or was it caused by something else.

Paper: http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/gaming-experience-as-a-prerequisite-for-theadoption-of-digital-games-in-the-classroom/

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