Increasing the effectiveness of digital educational games: The effects of a learning instruction on students’ learning, motivation and cognitive load

Highlights

• Playing increased students’ knowledge on the historical theme.

• Learning instructions are not recommended for learning with educational games.

• An extrinsic learning instruction increased extraneous cognitive load.

• The learning outcome was higher if students played just for fun.

Abstract

This study examines the effects of integrating instructional support in the form of a prompt that highlights the importance of learning from the educational game. We set out to answer the question of whether or not it is necessary to indicate an educational game as a learning material (in contrast to pure entertainment) to facilitate learning relevant for school. Research on entertainment media suggests that the implementation of such a learning instruction increases learners’ investment of mental effort and, thus, the learning outcome. Then again, learning instruction as an extrinsic incentive might negatively influence intrinsic motivation and extraneous cognitive load. Therefore, this study examines the effects of learning instruction on students’ intrinsic motivation, cognitive load, and learning with a digital educational game. We carried out a one-factor (learning instruction: yes/no) experimental design with N = 150 participants (age 13 to 17). Results indicate that the learning instruction increased task-irrelevant processing and decreased the learning outcome. Thus, adding an explicit learning instruction is not recommended. On the contrary, our results suggest that playing just for fun enhances the effectiveness of such a learning environment.

Introduction

Digital games are not just developed and employed exclusively for entertainment purposes, but have successfully being incorporated as learning and training tools for a broad range of different areas (Breuer and Bente, 2010, Ritterfeld et al., 2009a). Substantial research on the design and effects of digital educational games (Clark et al., 2016, Ritterfeld et al., 2009b, Romero et al., 2015, Wouters et al., 2013) has been carried out. Still, we observe a research gap with respect to understanding the importance of instructional design for educational games. While entertaining elements may motivate and facilitate learning (Ritterfeld & Weber, 2006), cognitive psychology, especially Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), also points to some crucial drawbacks of entertaining media in general and digital games in particular for meaningful learning (Kalyuga & Plass, 2009). In order to utilize educational games, it seems necessary to include instructional features that foster appropriate cognitive processing while at the same time not decreasing players’ intrinsic motivation. Such an instructional feature could be a prompt with a learning instruction. Given that educational games are often used in a school context, surprisingly little research has been devoted to answering the question of how far explicit instruction to learn from the game, given outside the actual gaming context, enhances a successful learning experience (Clark et al., 2016, Ke, 2016, Wouters et al., 2013, Wouters and van Oostendorp, 2013).

In theory, an explicit learning instruction increases learners’ mental effort in learning with entertaining learning material, and provokes deeper learning strategies (Salomon & Leigh, 1984). However, how far this is transferable to learning with digital games is still an open question.

The relationship between instructions and learning through digital games is complex. In this study we examine the effects of a learning instruction on students learning in a digital educational game, with a focus on motivation and cognitive processing.

Playing (digital) games is an activity characterized by high levels of intrinsic motivation. A player plays for the sake of playing and not because of a consequence that lies outside the activity (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, Deci and Ryan, 1985, Giannakos, 2013, Malone, 1981, Wouters et al., 2013). The entertainment experience of digital games is achieved through the satisfaction of intrinsic needs (Tamborini, Bowman, Eden, Grizzard, & Organ, 2010). The objective behind the use of (educational) games for learning is to harness a player’s intrinsic motivation to play and to encourage learning (e.g., Bourgonjon et al., 2010, Mayer, 2011). The level of intrinsic motivation has cognitive consequences as well. With high levels of intrinsic motivation, we observe higher levels of attention, and vice versa (e.g., Hidi, 2000, Sansone and Smith, 2000). With respect to digital games, this is described as part of the flow experience: a mental state of intense, but effortless, concentration (Garris et al., 2003, Kiili, 2005). Thus, a player in the flow state fully uses their working memory resources to process the game content (Nacke, 2009). Empirical results on educational games indicate that intrinsic motivation positively influences the learning outcome (Giannakos, 2013, Habgood, 2007, Virvou et al., 2005). However, the use of digital educational games as learning material has drawbacks. Reviews of the research literature over the past years yield heterogeneous results on their educational value (e.g., Ke, 2009, Tobias et al., 2011, Vogel et al., 2006, Wouters et al., 2013). We observe empirical evidence that the potential of a digital game to facilitate learning depends not only on motivation but also on cognitive aspects, and especially on the instructional support for learners (Ke, 2009, Ke, 2016, Wouters and van Oostendorp, 2013). Ke (2009, p. 21) notes, as a result of her meta-analysis on learning through digital games, that “the studies generally conclude that learners without instructional support in the game will learn to play the game rather than learn domain-specific knowledge embedded in the game.” Hence, the examination of instructional features that increase the effectiveness of educational games is a precondition for appropriate use in educational contexts. This kind of research is also described as a value-added approach (Mayer, 2011).

Cognitive Load Theory examines instructional design and design features from a cognitive perspective. Based on the assumption of a limited cognitive capacity in working memory, research on CLT tries to identify instructional designs that make the usage of cognitive resources for dealing with information as efficient as possible (Paas et al., 2003, Plass et al., 2010, Schnotz and Kürschner, 2007, Sweller et al., 2011). CLT differentiates between extraneous and intrinsic cognitive load. Extraneous cognitive load is caused through the design of an instruction. An inefficient design requires cognitive capacity that is not related to learning but rather to other cognitive activities. During learning, extraneous cognitive load should be as low as possible. This way more cognitive capacity is available for the learning process. Intrinsic cognitive load, in contrast, directly contributes to learning. It is caused by the complexity of the task and information, especially by the complexity of interactions between elements (element interactivity) that have to be processed for understanding the content. CLT researchers also argue for a third type of cognitive load, namely germane cognitive load caused through schema acquisition (e.g., Sweller, van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998). In this paper we follow the argumentation of Kalyuga (2011), stating that there is no need to distinguish between intrinsic and germane cognitive load as both are redundant concepts.

It is reasonable to assume that cognitive load is a relevant aspect in learning with an interactive and explorative learning environment, such as an educational game. Especially extraneous cognitive load can be very high due to cognitive resources required for navigating, solving quests, finding hidden information, or exploring the game world – activities relevant for the progress of the game but not necessarily for learning (Kalyuga & Plass, 2009). Findings indicate a relationship between cognitive load and learning in educational games. An increased extraneous cognitive load negatively affects learning gains, especially in games with high-level cognitive demands (Beserra et al., 2014, Hwang et al., 2013, Schrader, 2012). Against this background, various instructional features have been mentioned to alter the effectiveness of educational games, especially different forms of guidance (Adams and Clark, 2014, Leemkuil and de Jong, 2011, Moreno and Mayer, 2005) and feedback (Mayer and Johnson, 2010, Moreno, 2004, Nelson, 2007). However, the findings are ambiguous: not every instructional feature is effective (Wouters & van Oostendorp, 2013). A possible explanation for these inconsistent findings might be the variety of the instructional features or the variety of different game types examined (Ke, 2009, Ke, 2016, Wouters and van Oostendorp, 2013). Moreover, the implementation of instructional features can also cause negative effects on learning. The results from Charsky and Ressler (2011) and Johnson and Mayer (2010) indicate that this is the case if (1) students’ motivation or flow experience is affected negatively, or (2) the extraneous cognitive load is increased. Effectiveness also depends on the player’s different intensity of usage of the instructional feature (Nelson, 2007) or whether or not the instructional features are implemented in the game context or external to the game (Vandercruysse et al., 2016). The latter is closely related to another crucial question that we examine further in this paper: the degree of integration of a game in an educational context (Vandercruysse, Desmet, Vandewaetere, & Elen, 2015).

From a student’s perspective, playing a game as explicit learning material and as part of a school lesson is different from playing purely for entertainment purposes. In the first case, there is a clear link between educational objectives and a game. The students have a goal outside the game context – learning for a school lesson. It is likely that if students play a game for pure entertainment the link between gameplay and learning objectives in the classroom is less clear. The question is whether or not it is necessary to indicate an educational game as learning material (in contrast to pure entertainment) to facilitate learning that is relevant for school (Tobias et al., 2011, Vandercruysse et al., 2015).

Therefore, we examine an instructional feature that is assumed to establish the link between game and educational context: a prompt with an explicit instruction to learn. Such a learning instruction, given before the game starts, is meant to influence the perceptions of the students towards the educational game. Research by Salomon on entertaining learning materials (Salomon and Leigh, 1984, Salomon, 1983, Salomon, 1984) highlights the role of learners’ perceptions for the learning outcome (see also Cennamo, 1993). Salomon argues that meaningful learning, e.g., learning that causes understanding of the content, requires a substantial amount of mental effort. The amount of mental effort invested, defined as the number of non-automatic mental elaborations applied to learning material, affects the learning outcome. Salomon assumes that learners have preconceptions on the amount of mental effort they have to invest to understand the learning material. Because of their previous experiences with entertainment, they tend to perceive entertaining learning material as ‘easy’. This preconception causes a decreased amount of invested mental effort; or, in other words, it decreases the depth of information processing. A lower mental effort is thus associated with lower learning performance:

“Thus, as the present research tends to show, children who fail to actively seek to understand television content at a deeper level can still enjoy a program, although they are not likely to gain much knowledge from it” (Salomon & Leigh, 1984, p. 134).

With an explicit instruction to learn, Salomon manipulates the preconceptions of students towards the mental effort necessary to deal with entertaining learning material. In groups watching TV, a learning instruction (‘to see how much you can learn from it’) in comparison with an entertainment instruction (‘for fun’) significantly increases the amount of mental effort invested and the learning outcome. Depth of processing seems to be influenced through the instruction (Salomon & Leigh, 1984).

Salomon’s approach is based on the same theoretical assumption as CLT, namely the limited processing capacity of working memory. Whereas Salomon’s approach focuses on active cognitive processing as a predictor for learning, CLT also considers cognitive processing that is extraneous to learning. The notion of different levels of cognitive processing, namely rote or surface learning and deep or meaningful learning, is also argued for in CLT research (e.g., Sweller et al., 2011). However, studies on the effects of a learning instruction on learning with educational digital games are relatively few and – until now – do not take CLT into account (Wouters, Paas, & van Merriënboer, 2008). In light of an increasing popularity of digital educational games, the question of whether or not a learning instruction might be necessary for effective game-based learning in educational contexts is crucial. In such a playful and interactive learning environment, it seems more than likely that players do not invest a sufficient amount of mental effort and in this way fail to reach the learning purposes. Hence, some authors emphasize the necessity of an explicit instruction to learn (e.g., Petko, 2008). However, there is a lack of unambiguous empirical evidence for this idea. The results of an experiment by Erhel and Jamet (2013, study 1) support the effectiveness of a learning instruction. Participants with a learning instruction perform significantly better on a comprehension test than players in the group with entertainment instruction. However, most studies come to different results: they find no effect of a learning instruction on learning outcome (Vandercruysse et al., 2015), or a reverse effect insofar that participants in the entertainment instruction condition have significantly higher scores on the comprehension test (Erhel & Jamet, 2013, study 2). The latter try to explain this result with less fear of failure in the entertainment instruction group, because the researchers integrate feedback (knowledge of correct response) in the quiz game to enhance deeper learning. We assume there are also other possible explanations for such results; on the one hand, decreasing motivation, and on the other hand, extraneous cognitive load (Charsky & Ressler, 2011).