PRE2017 3 Groep9

Introduction

Education is one of the most important aspect of society, and one of the problems it is currently confronted with is the problem of innovation. Especially with the digitalization that is happening all over the world now, schools are looking for ways to include this into their educational systems. One of the possible innovation is game based learning. Over the past years there has been research into this subject. Most of this research either focuses on what teaching methods are used in games, or they focus on how games can teach something like soft skills. However, most of these researches ignore providing concrete evidence of whether these methods are actually better or worse. Now this is not all of the research but a trend can be found which is that no research has been done into whether the purely didactic value of game based learning is better compared to traditional methods. That is where our research comes into play.

USE

As stated before society is currently dealing with the innovation of education, which is something our project can help with. However apart from society there are also the users which can make use of this project. Studying can be a long and tedious process and because of this the users results can be suboptimal. Our project aims to make studying a more enjoyable process, while keeping the same efficiency, which would be an improvement for the user experience.

Objective

The question that we will try to answer is the following:

- “Is learning words through integration in a game better than simply cramming using a list with translations?”

This question is still a bit vague so we have split it into two parts:

- “Is learning words through integration in a game more efficient than cramming using a list with translations?”

- “Is learning words through integration in a game more enjoyable than cramming using a list with translations?”

Now to specify what we mean by integration in a game. We are not talking about apps such as Duolingo where a game-like element is added to the learning of words. We are taking it a step further by making an actual game, in which you happen to learn words. That is all to say that we want the learning of a language to be part of a game, unlike other apps, like Duolingo, which has a “game” as part of learning a language.

Hypothesis

We believe that this method of integrating learning into a game, will result in at least as good results as far as learning the meaning of the words is considered. That is we believe that given a test, people that have studied using the game, will do at least as good as people who studied normally. We also believe that learning with a game can actually feel like playing a game, instead of simply another way of learning, because of this we believe that this way of studying will be more enjoyable, when compared to other more traditional ways of studying.

We believe in this hypothesis because of all the learning methods that can be integrated into a game. These methods can be found in the state of the art as well as in the game concept.

Method

In order to find the answer to our question, we will create our own game based on the game-based learning methods found in the literature. We will then run a test with two groups. One of these groups will have to learn a list of words in the traditional way, the other group will learn the same list of words through our game. Both groups will then be tested on their knowledge and asked for their experience during the studying. The reason we use the learning of words, is because it is simple to test and to create a game for the limited time that we were given. Learning words is also one of the most simple things to learn in the way that not a lot of things factor in, therefore it is perfect to test for purely didactic value.

Further explanation of the game that will be used for testing, including game requirements: PRE2017 3 Groep9 - Game Concept

The test setup is described here: PRE2017 3 Groep9 - Test Setup

Results

After all test results were collected and processed, it turned out that the traditional way of studying performed better than our learning game. More detailed information about the results can be found here: PRE2017 3 Group9 - Results