An Implementation Study: The Effect of Digital Games Implementation on Calculus I Learning Performance for College Students
Abstract
Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) demonstrated a positive impact on students’ motivation, engagement, knowledge acquisition, and many other areas. However, all the benefits DGBL can offer for the classroom do not seem to be enticing enough to persuade classroom instructors to implement DGBL in their classroom. There is a disconnect between current studies in DGBL with the reality in the classroom. With a limited information available on how to implement a digital game in the classroom, a classroom instructor needs to overcome a lot of hurdles. Meanwhile, at the same time, classroom instructors feel the pressure from both parents and the school administrator if the outcome for the decision using digital games not as expected.
The first part of the study is a systematic review to seek understanding on implementation practices done so far in the DGBL. The systematic review found out that in DGBL studies there were few and fragmented information on the implementation practices. Consequently, it is very difficult to comprehend on how the study differentiate the frequency (number of sessions for the students to play the game) and the duration (how long supposed the students play the game in every session or in total) to make sure a learning transfer happening. The systematic review laid a foundation of the importance to understand how gaming frequency and gaming duration will affect the learning transfer in the DGBL classroom.
The second part of the study seeks for understanding on how the implementation plan might create a difference in students’ gaming activity and how it will affect their learning performance on the Revised Calculus Concept Inventory test. This study was designed as a quasi-experimental study with one classroom as a treatment group and one other classroom as a control group. Treatment classroom has 31 students from a cohort program starting Fall 2022 and the control classroom has 25 students a non-cohort program. Both classrooms were from a college in Bryan, Texas. The result indicated a non-significant result on the student’s learning performance for the treatment group and the gaming activity showed a high participation. However, this study could not make a comparison between the treatment and the control group because of unexpected circumstances between a cohort and a non-cohort classroom. This study brought an insight on how different implementation plan might impact the student’s gaming activity, but still need to be confirmed through a further study with a presence of the control group.
Citation
Sutedjo, Armanto (2023). An Implementation Study: The Effect of Digital Games Implementation on Calculus I Learning Performance for College Students. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /199990.