Developmental differences inc children and early adolescents’ approaches to educational game play

• In Event: Contributing factors to digital game efficacy for learning among children and early adolescents

Abstract

One precursor to facilitating transfer of learning is to characterize the type of cognitive skills, or problem-solving approaches that children and early adolescents use during their digital gameplay. Such an effort entails making these approaches overt for examination. One such means is posed via think-aloud methodology, whereby individuals narrate their behaviors and thinking as they engage with a task (Ericsson & Simon, 1993). One presenter will share a study in which 178 fourth-eighth graders’ think aloud protocols were gathered while mastering a novel, level-up coding game (Lightbot). Before playing, a third of the students across each grade were asked to focus on what they were learning while playing (metacognitive condition), how much they liked the game while playing (affective condition), or no focus (control condition). These foci had emerged from earlier work examining eight-nine and 10-11 year olds’ goals for their game performance (Blumberg, 2000) whereby affective goals were linked to poorer performance than those addressing children’s reflection on their gameplay. After playing Lightbot for 10 consecutive minutes after which they rated how much they liked the game and indicated what they remembered and learned while playing (serving as a debriefing). Participants' comments while playing were prepared as transcripts for each participant. Each transcript was coded by two independent raters for comments that referenced impasses, insights as to negotiate the game, process goals, game strategies, specific game rules, game progress, evaluation of the game, and evaluation of one’s game performance.
Across all participants, 27,983 comments were made. Findings showed that fourth-graders made significantly fewer comments than sixth- and seventh-graders. Fourth graders also made significantly fewer game progress comments than all other participants. No main effects of condition or grade by condition interactions were found. To examine participants’ comments over time, their comments were divided chronologically into 10 bins or roughly equal size. A multivariate GLM of the number of comments with grade and condition as categorical predictors and time as a covariate yielded a main effect of time on game rules in which the number of comments was initially high but immediately decreased.
Game performance was assessed by the highest level reached in the game (M = 8.49, SD = 3.3.1). Sixth- and seventh-graders reached higher levels than fourth- and fifth-graders. Further, game performance was positively correlated with the making of insight, strategy, process goal, and game progress comments.
Collectively, these findings highlight how developmental differences in negotiating a given educational game may be reflected in the differential approaches that children and adolescents adopt while they play. These approaches, in turn, may have ramifications for how well their game play learning may translate across different educational tasks.

Authors

• Fran C Blumberg, Fordham University
  Presenting Author

• Harneet Kaur Sahni, Fordham University

• John D. Randall, Rutgers University

• Colin Teeter, Fordham University