Entertainment Video Games for Academic Learning: A Systematic Review

Entertainment video games are very popular among young audiences. Nevertheless, despite their potential to improve cognitive functioning, they are still studied rarely as a tool for digital game-based learning. To better understand video gaming practices’ value in the classroom, this article provides a systematic review of literature on the effect of entertainment video games on academic learning. Our literature search yielded 49 relevant intervention studies published between 2005 and 2019 that integrated entertainment video games into academic curricula from preschool to college. Our review revealed that entertainment video games can be an effective educational tool and are beneficial in almost all academic disciplines, particularly in foreign language and science. However, research on entertainment video gaming’s effects on academic learning is still not extensive enough and remains mostly qualitative. Future studies need to provide a quantitative approach to complete and confirm already-existing literature, particularly in the environmental and social sciences, physical education, and programming. Given entertainment video games’ popularity and benefits on cognition and learning, it seems essential to investigate their practical value further in the education sector and to determine the mechanisms that mediate their effects on academic learning.

Does Augmented Reality Also Augment Knowledge Acquisition? Augmented Reality Compared to Reading in Learning About the Human Digestive System?

Augmented Reality (AR) has become an emerging educational technology in classroom practice and science education. While most research and contemporary meta-analyses reveal benefits with regard to knowledge acquisition and motivation of Augmented Reality–based learning environments, most of the studies lack a clear and fair control condition. In this research, we compared an AR-based learning environment with a paper-based learning environment for self-directed learning about the human digestive system. In an experiment, we examined the effects of these two conditions for knowledge acquisition, cognitive load, and experience of flow and immersion. Results reveal significantly higher outcomes in favor of the text-based instruction with regard to conceptual domain knowledge and mental representation of the human digestive system and its involved organs. Positive effects of the AR learning environment are limited to a higher experience of immersion.

From Critique to Computational Thinking: A Peer-Assessment-Supported Problem Identification, Flow Definition, Coding, and Testing Approach for Computer Programming Instruction

Scholars believe that computational thinking is one of the essential competencies of the 21st century and computer programming courses have been recognized as a potential means of fostering students’ computational thinking. In tradition instruction, PFCT (problem identification, flow definition, coding, and testing) is a commonly adopted procedure to guide students to learn and practice computer programming. However, without further guidance, students might focus on learning the syntax of computer programming language rather than the concept of solving problems. This study proposes a peer-assessment-supported PFCT (PA-PFCT) approach for boosting students’ computer programming knowledge and computational thinking awareness. A quasi-experiment was conducted on a computer programming course in a high school to evaluate its influence on students’ learning achievement, computational thinking awareness, learning motivation, and self-efficacy. An experimental group of 51 students learned with the proposed approach, while a control group of 49 students learned with the traditional PFCT (T-PFCT) approach. The experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly enhanced the students’ computational thinking awareness, learning motivation, and self-efficacy, while not having significant impacts on their computer programming knowledge test scores.

Effect of Gamified Mobile Applications and the Role of Player Types on the Achievement of Students

The purpose of this study was to examine a gamified mobile application’s effect on students’ achievement, and whether the player types of the students predicted their achievement scores. A “pretest-posttest control group design” research was conducted with 65 undergraduate students taking a compulsory online course. In the study, a gamified mobile app was developed by the researchers and then applied within an online History I course. The results of the study showed no significant difference between the achievement scores of the Experimental Group and Control Group students. However, multiple linear regression analysis results showed that the Experimental Group’s students’ achievement scores were significantly predicted by the player types they used and their mobile app performance. It is argued, therefore, that this result underlines the importance of player type in designing effective mobile gamification apps for the purpose of learning. Suggestions for further studies are also provided.

Collaborative Behavior Patterns of Students in Programming Instruction

The pair programming approach is used to overcome the difficulties of the programming process in education environments. In this study, the interaction sequences during the paired programming of preservice teachers was investigated. Lag sequential analysis were used to explore students’ behavioral patterns in pair programming. The participants of the study consist of 14 students, seven pairs enrolled in a Programming Languages course. The findings indicate that there are significant behavioral learning sequences. During the program development process, students hesitated to create an algorithm and to improve an existing one while proposing the next step. In addition, they constantly waited for approval. Collaborative behaviors such as giving and receiving feedback and helping other partners were less observed in females. In addition, significant sequential driver and navigator behaviors were presented. The findings of the study have important implications for instructors and designers when using a pair programming approach in teaching programming. In the future, programming instruction environments can be designed by considering the learner behaviors that are presented in this study.

Longitudinal Effects in the Effectiveness of Educational Virtual Field Trips

Virtual and immersive virtual reality, VR and iVR, provide flexible and engaging learning opportunities, such as virtual field trips (VFTs). Despite its growing popularity for education, understanding how iVR compared to non-immersive media influences learning is still challenged by mixed empirical results and a lack of longitudinal research. This study addresses these issues through an experiment in which undergraduate geoscience students attended two temporally separated VFT sessions through desktop virtual reality (dVR) or iVR, with their learning experience and outcomes measured after each session. Our results show higher levels of enjoyment and satisfaction as well as a stronger sense of spatial presence in iVR students in both VFTs compared to dVR students, but no improvement in learning outcomes in iVR compared to dVR. More importantly, we found that there exists a critical interaction between VR condition and repeated participation in VFTs indicating that longitudinal exposure to VFTs improves knowledge performance more when learning in iVR than through dVR. These results suggest that repeated use of iVR may be beneficial in sustaining students’ emotional engagement and compensating the initial deficiency in their objective learning outcomes compared to other less immersive technologies.

Effect of Mind Mapping on Creative Thinking of Children in Scratch Visual Programming Education

Scratch, a kind of visual programming software, has been widely used in instruction for primary school children. Scratch constructs a digital world for children to design, develop, and create coursework in which their creative thinking is fostered. Different instructional methods have been designed and implemented to stimulate children’s creative thinking skills through their coursework. This study investigated whether scaffolding construction with mind mapping promoted children’s creative thinking in a Scratch course. Two groups of 84 fifth-grade pupils participated in the study. The experimental group of 44 students adopted the scaffolding construction with mind mapping in the Scratch course, while the control group of 40 students did not use the mind mapping method. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural (TTCT-F) and Torrance Creative Personality Self-Report Scale were used three times over the 16-week learning period. The results show that learning in the Scratch course promoted the children’s creative thinking. The difference between the two groups indicates that mind mapping was beneficial to improve the children’s creative thinking.

The Effects of Three Instructor Participatory Roles on a Small Group’s Collaborative Concept Mapping

Collaborative concept mapping, as one of the widely used computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) modes, has been used to foster students’ meaning making, problem solving, and knowledge construction. Previous empirical research has used varied instructional scaffoldings and has reported different effects of those scaffoldings on collaboration. To further examine the effects of instructional scaffoldings, this research implements three different instructor participatory roles (i.e., cognitive contributor, group regulator, and social supporter) to support online collaborative concept mapping (CCM). We use multiple learning analytics methods to examine the group’s CCM processes from the social, cognitive, and metacognitive dimensions, supplemented with assessments of the concept maps. The research reveals different effects of three instructor participatory roles on the group’s collaborative behaviors, discourses, and performances. When the instructor engaged as a cognitive contributor, the student group achieved a lowly-interactive, low-level metacognitive engagement and behavior-oriented knowledge construction; when the instructor engaged as a group regulator, the student group achieved a socially-balanced, high-level metacognitive engagement and behavior-communication-interrelated knowledge construction; and when the instructor engaged as a social supporter, the student group achieved a highly-interactive, medium-level metacognitive engagement and communication-oriented knowledge construction. Based on the results, this research proposed pedagogical, analytical, and theoretical implications for future empirical research of CSCL.

Predicting Students’ Achievement in a Hybrid Environment Through Self-Regulated Learning, Log Data, and Course Engagement: A Data Mining Approach

With the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, many universities adopted a hybrid learning model as a substitute for a traditional one. Predicting students’ performance in hybrid environments is a complex task because it depends on extracting and analyzing different types of data: log data, self-reports, and face-to-face interactions. Students must develop Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategies to monitor their learning in hybrid contexts. This study aimed to predict the achievement of 82 undergraduates enrolled in a hybrid English for Business Communication course using data mining techniques. While clustering techniques were used to understand SRL patterns through classifying students with similar SRL data into clusters, classification algorithms were utilized to predict students' achievement by integrating the log files and course engagement factors. Clustering results showed that the group with high SRL achieved higher grades than the groups with medium SRL and low SRL. Classification results revealed that log data and engagement activities successfully predicted students’ academic performance with more than 88% accuracy. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature of SRL and hybrid classrooms by interpreting the predictive power of log data, self-reports, and face-to-face engagement to predict students’ achievement, a relatively unexplored area. This study recommended practical implications to promote students’ SRL and achievement in hybrid environments.

Unleashing the Potential of Abstraction From Cloud of Computational Thinking: A Systematic Review of Literature

Although abstraction is widely understood to be one of the primary components of computational thinking, the roots of abstraction may be traced back to different fields. Hence, the meaning of abstraction in the context of computational thinking is often confounded, as researchers interpret abstraction through diverse lenses. To disentangle these conceptual threads and gain insight into the operationalisation of abstraction, a systematic review of 96 empirical studies was undertaken. Analysis revealed that identifying features of entities, extracting relevant features, discovering patterns, creating rules and assembling the parts together were the core actions of abstraction. With the primary aim of simplifying practical procedures, abstraction was operationalised as the sophistication of a program, the matching of patterns, the creation of alternative representations, the transfer of solutions, the measurement of a learner’s activity and reading program codes. There is an obvious need for researchers to align the conceptual meanings they have established of abstraction with the practical facts of operationalisation. The need to empirically validate emerging models and the implications for future research are discussed.