The authors systematically searched the internet for information on African Digital Games (ADGs). They then applied a lens of serious games where they defined serious games created to have an impact on the target audience, which is beyond the pure entertainment aspect. They found a wide variety of ADGs and grouped them according to two broad main…

Family leisure activities require both parental interaction and supervision. This research involved 488 parents of children between 3 and 8 years old from public schools of early childhood and primary education at Gran Canaria, one of the Eastern Canary Islands (Spain); the aim was to analyze the shared leisure in family and its connection with…

The first obstacles to overcome when a student has to face the task of programming for the first time are the abstraction level, the comprehension of a language with unfamiliar concepts for him/her and the specific syntax for each programming language. This work presents the qualitative results obtained in a study focused on the gain of skills for…

The purpose of this study was to explore the educational outcomes of four different methods of instruction: a traditional slideshow control group, and an educational video game played either individually, competitively in small groups, or cooperatively in small groups. The instructional tool of interest was an educational video game designed to…

This article offers a typological framework for analyzing how video games make use of historical elements, shaping the ways players engage with and think about the past. Phenomenologically induced labels are posited for identifying different deployments of and experiences with historical elements in video games, illustrated by examples drawn from…

Recent work around the use of virtual world video games in educational contexts has conceptualised literacies as communal processes, whilst considering complex notions of collaboration through participants' multiplicity of presence in hybrid virtual/physical locations. However, further research is necessary in order to help us understand how the…

The hallmark of game-based learning is that students discover concepts through trial and error as they play. With the digital landscape in higher education shifting to mobile-first, new tools for learning chemistry are both possible and needed. Interactive games for chemistry bring intuitive content directly to students through their devices. The…

Digital game-based instruction is a relatively new phenomenon in the world of education. Teachers hold the key to unlock the world of DGBL within the classroom. Within the classroom a teacher is much like an artist with a blank canvas and typically artistic freedom is granted. What is taught, the curriculum, is generally mandated by local,…

Level creation is a creative game-play exercise that resembles problem-posing, and has shown to be engaging and helpful for players to learn about the game's core mechanic. However, in user-authoring environments, users often create levels without considering the game's objective, or with entirely different objectives in mind, resulting in levels…

The purpose of this qualitative case study study is to examine the ways in which mobile videogames can be used in non-formal educational environments, to support students to develop decision-making skills through negotiated play. In the context of this study, the health literacy mobile videogame, "PlayForward: Elm City Stories" developed…

A large literature shows that relatively young students perform worse in class. Using data from the 'Health Behaviour in School Aged Children' international survey, we additionally find robust evidence that they are aware of performing poorly, they spend more time watching TV and less time doing sports than older peers, while tending to spend as…

Evaluation professionals need to be nimble and innovative in their approaches in order to be relevant and provide useful evidence to decision-makers, stakeholders, and society in the crowded public policy landscape. In this article, we offer serious games as a method that can be employed by evaluators to address three persisting challenges in…

The aim of the current study is to investigate the use of screen in young children before and during the pandemic and the attitudes of mothers towards their children's screen-viewing time. To achieve this, 20 mothers who have children between 1.5 and 6 years-old included in the study. The design of this qualitative study is phenomenology to…

In an attempt to investigate concerns expressed by high school counselors, the researchers developed a quantitative Likert-scale questionnaire to assess the relationships among school experiences and video gaming and texting. Questions about video gaming and texting appeared with other questions about social relations, extra-curricular activities,…

Little is known about what design elements in digital learning games enhance learning; especially in the case of child audiences. This study examines the effects of a learning game's visual design on perceived attractiveness and learning outcomes. We developed two visual designs for the game: one with supposedly high esthetic value and another…