Computer gameplay and social media are the two most common forms of entertainment in the digital age. Many scholars share the assumption that leisure-time digital consumption is associated with CS affinity, but there is a dearth of research evidence for this relationship. Female students generally spend less time on gaming and more time on social…

This meta-analysis study aims to explore the game-based learning (GBL) effects on students' learning motivation and academic achievement in K-12 science education. Recently GBL has been broadly used for students with low learning motivation because the dynamic learning activities in computer games could provide benefits for K-12 education. We…

Number sense is the foundation of arithmetic and algebra, yet relatively little research has deeply investigated what children do as they develop number sense. This case study provides insights into that development as it occurred during interactions with a multi-touch mathematics digital game, including conceptually congruent gestures. Findings…

To understand how learner metacognition and goal orientation affect learner problem-solving in a Serious Game (SG) environment, this study examined 12 undergraduate students' metacognition, goal orientations, and problem-solving performances and processes while playing a SG that adopts problem-based learning pedagogy to teach space science.…

In this proposal, I share a synthesized framework that incorporates mathematics education with game design principles. This framework was used to design a videogame that supported mathematical play with fractions, and I share excerpts of middle school students playing the game to validate the synthesized framework.

The results of over twenty-five years of research seem clear: the addition of seductive visual details in video games hinders performance of learners (Garner, Gillingham, & White, 1989; Thalheimer, 2004; Rey, 2012). Yet, countless other research results propose the opposite: that visual embellishments and well-designed ambiguity instead…

This qualitative study explored undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of team competition, motivation, and learner engagement in an online educational game developed at one university. Researchers explored qualitative data from focus groups, observations, and documents by coding for themes and sub-themes. They found that students were mainly…

We developed the Draw-A-Computer-Scientist-Test (DACST) to better understand elementary school students' conceptions of computer scientists and the nature of their work. By understanding how young children perceive computer scientists, we can broaden their ideas about the activities and images of computer scientists. We administered the DACST to…

Studies have shown that people can learn valuable skills by playing games, and more teachers are using digital games in classrooms. While researchers understand the difficulties of using digital games, further inquiries are needed to see how teachers effectively use games to improve students' learning. This paper begins to address these issues by…

In this study we examined the effectiveness of a mobile game called MathDash for improving computational fluency as compared to a conventional drill and practice approach with computerized multiple-choice test items. An optical brain imaging method called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIR) was utilized to assess changes in neural…