Interactive digital media, or video games, are a powerful new medium. They offer immersive experiences in which players solve problems. Players learn more than just facts--ways of seeing and understanding problems so that they "become" different kinds of people. "Serious games" coming from business strategy, advergaming, and entertainment gaming…

This study examines the influence of players' age, gender, and gaming preferences and habits (from now on, "gaming preferences") on the effectiveness of a specific videogame that has been designed to increase the interest towards classical theater among teenagers. Using a validated instrument, participants were divided into four groups…

Upper-secondary school students must prepare for adult life, which--among others--entails acquiring relevant skills and discovering their own potential. Efforts at European and national levels have been made to ensure that students gain the competences, the so-called key competences, which facilitate functioning in the modern world. However, in…

A digital disconnect perspective is founded on an assumption that technology use in the home is frequent, creative and generative, and that technology use in the early childhood centre should be the same as that found in the home. However, such arguments divert our attention from understanding the nature of the setting and thereby from an…

In theory, computer game-based learning can support several vocabulary learning affordances that have been identified in the foreign language learning research. In the observable evidence, learning with computer games has been shown to improve performance on vocabulary recall tests. However, while simple recall can be a sign of learning,…

Advanced displays and natural user interfaces (NUI) are a very suitable combination for developing systems to provide an enhanced and richer user experience. This combination can be appropriate in several fields and has not been extensively exploited. One of the fields that this combination is especially suitable for is education. Nowadays,…

Writing down spoken number words (transcoding) is an ability that is predictive of math performance and related to working memory ability. We analysed these relationships in a large sample of over 25,000 children, from kindergarten to the end of primary school, who solved transcoding items with a computer adaptive system. Furthermore, we…

It is believed that the game programming education at school should be conducted in consideration of an individual student's ability, an elementary programmer. Language to be used in the programming education also need to be associated with the ones that are actually used in the game industry. Lately, many researches on the educational programming…

Today's video games aren't even a little bit like the ones that came out a few decades ago. Not only has the underlying technology dramatically improved, but the medium has matured remarkably in the years since "Pong" and "Space Invaders." ruled the arcades. The artistic promise of video games has yet to be fulfilled. The current state of the…

This content analysis examined levels of vocabulary within massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). A total of six MMORPGs were studied; three were pay-to-play (P2P), and three were free-to-play (F2P). Sixty hours of game play (10 hours per game) provided the researcher with 50,240 embedded vocabulary words. Each MMORPG was…

Computer simulations combined with games have been successfully used to teach conceptual physics. However, there is no clear methodology for guiding the design of these types of games. To remedy this, we propose a structured methodology for the design of conceptual physics games that explicitly integrates the principles of the intrinsic…

Sigmund Tobias came to the United States in 1948, after his family had fled to China from the Holocaust in Europe. His Memoir ("Strange Haven: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai") describes that part of his life. He settled in New York, where he completed his B.A. and M.S. in School Psychology from the City College of New York, and a…

In this meta-analysis, we systematically reviewed research on digital games and learning for K-16 students. We synthesized comparisons of game versus nongame conditions (i.e., media comparisons) and comparisons of augmented games versus standard game designs (i.e., value-added comparisons). We used random-effects meta-regression models with robust…

Due to a progressive deterioration of our planet and its resources, environmental education has become important and children are required to understand environmental issues at an early ages. So, they can cultivate the positive changes in the future. Over the past decade, many new evaluation methods have developed for evaluating user experience…

Only a limited number of research studies have investigated how students design educational computer games and its impact on student learning. In addition, most studies on educational game design by students were conducted in the areas of mathematics and science. Using the qualitative case study approach, this study explored how seventh graders…