Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) are reliable predictors of success in school and the workplace. A typical technique for encouraging higher-order thinking is to use instructional design interventions that engage learners in simple cognitive activities. Business simulation game (BSG) is one of the types of interactive learning environments that…

In line with the attention-to-affect model, this study employed a game that encompasses Gestalt perception to explore how extraneous cognitive load (ECL) and gameplay anxiety correlate with attitude towards exploitative learning and attitude towards explorative learning as students play the Visual-Saliency game (VSG) with images of artworks. The…

Game-based learning (GBL) has increasingly been used to promote students' learning engagement. Although prior GBL studies have highlighted the significance of learning engagement as a mediator of students' meaningful learning, the existing accounts failed to capture specific evidence of how exactly students' in-game actions in GBL enhance learning…

Despite the increased interest in gamification approaches, there is a lack of comparative studies that shed light on the applicability of these approaches in educational contexts. In this explorative study, with an experimental design, university learners (N = 98) studied a complex process (i.e., how to brew beer) in a 2-hour-long computerized…

This study explored youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) learning social competence in the context of innovative 3D virtual learning environment and the effects of gaming as a central element of the learning experience. The empirical study retrospectively compared the social interactions of 11 adolescents with ASD in game-and nongame-based 3D…

The design and application of educational board games have been emphasized in game-based learning. The integration of educational board games and augmented reality (AR) can help provide extensive cognitive-scaffolding for learners. This study proposed a dual-scaffolding framework that integrated peer-scaffolding and cognitive-scaffolding for an AR…

This study tested the effects of implementing a narrative computer-based educational game within a middle-school math class. Gameplay consisted of navigating through a virtual spaceship and completing missions by periodically engaging in learning-by-teaching activities that involved helping an avatar solve math problems. In a pretest/posttest…

The emergence of block-based environments aims to facilitate the problems caused by the abstractness of text-based languages. Recent studies generally focus on the effect of having block-based experience on programming education. This study is an attempt to observe the transfer of previous programming experiences (block-based vs. text-based) into…

This mixed-methods study examined the social gameplay and learning experience of 50 adults aged 60 years or more during 4 weeks of playing a multiplayer, educational digital Bingo game with embedded learning content about nutrition and health. The first phase consisted of 4 weeks of gameplay with quantitative data collection using pretests and…

This study developed a computer-simulated science inquiry environment, called the Science Detective Squad, to engage students in investigating an electricity problem that may happen in daily life. The environment combined the simulation of scientific instruments and a virtual environment, including gamified elements, such as points and a story for…

Program for International Student Assessment results indicate that while reading comprehension needs to be promoted, teachers are struggling to find ways to motivate students to do reading comprehension activities and although technology-enhanced learning approaches are entering the classroom, researchers are still experimenting with them to…

Learning physics often requires overcoming common misconceptions based on naïve interpretations of observations in the everyday world. One proposed way to help learners build appropriate physics intuitions is to expose them to computer simulations in which motion is based on Newtonian principles. In addition, playing video games that require…

This study developed a game simulation based on problem solving in the management of urban waste. We then investigated the factors affecting the decisions made by players. During gameplay, the players sought to guide the development of a city via management strategies involving a balance of economic growth and environmental protection. Nature…

While pedagogical and technological affordances of three-dimensional (3D) multiuser virtual worlds in various educational disciplines are largely well-known, a study about their effect on high school students' engagement in introductory programming courses is still lacking. This case study presents students' opinions about their participation in a…

Carefully engineered playable games can serve as vehicles for students and practitioners to learn and explore the programming of advanced computer architectures to execute applications, such as high performance computing (HPC) and complex, inter-networked, distributed systems. The article presents families of playable games that are grounded in…