Games have been successfully used in educational settings for many years. Still, it is not known in detail which factors influence the use and effectiveness of educational games. The game environment, its technology, and other game mechanics are factors directly linked to the game itself. The player's experience with the subject of the game and/or…

Initiated in response to informal reports of vocabulary gains from gamers at universities in New Zealand and the Netherlands, this qualitative study explored how English language learners autonomously learn vocabulary while playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Using research processes inherent in Grounded Theory, data…

The training of tactical decision making increasingly occurs through serious computer games. A challenging aspect of designing such games is the modelling of human emotions. Two studies were performed to investigate the relation between fidelity and human emotion recognition in virtual human characters. Study 1 compared five versions of a virtual…

This article attempts to shed some light on the possible learning benefits for language acquisition and intercultural development of authentic social interaction with expert peers through computer mediated communication (CMC) tools. The environments used in this study are video communication and the 3D virtual world "Second Life." For…

Simulation games are becoming increasingly popular in education, but more insight in their critical design features is needed. This study investigated the effects of fidelity of open patient cases in adjunct to an instructional e-module on students' cognitive skills and motivation. We set up a three-group randomized post-test-only design: a…

The paper deals with the facts obtained from TIMSS 2003 (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). This international comparative study, which includes 47 participant countries worldwide, explores dependence between eighth grade students' achievement in the areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and geography, and basic…

Discussion of teaching complex knowledge domains through exploration highlights two experiments that investigated the educational value of a Dutch computer simulation program which models the relationship between erosion and agriculture in a developing country as part of the secondary school geography curriculum. Learning by doing versus learning…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…