The effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments
Highlights
► We examine the effect of uncertainty on learning outcomes in game-like environments. ► Uncertainty enhances learning. ► Uncertainty is positively associated with motivation. ► As motivation increases, participants spend more time on answering the questions. ► As motivation increases, participants have higher accuracy in the questions.
Introduction
One of the serious problems in education is the failure of schools to motivate students (Lepper, Sethi, Dialdin, & Drake, 1997). Learning tasks in schools have been criticized to be boring, too easy, or decontextualized (Miller & Backman, 2004; Salomon & Perkins, 1998). In order to motivate students, serious games have been used for educational purposes for decades. Considering this potential of games, educators have been keen on creating more game-based learning environments (Dickey, 2005). In addition, computer and video games are suggested to increase the motivation and engagement of players because they include elements such as play, fantasy, curiosity, challenge, competition, cooperation, and learner-control (Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Carteaux, & Tuzun, 2005; Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Malone, 1981). However, insufficient research has been conducted to examine the effect of these individual elements on motivation and learning. One of the features of games that has yet remained unexplored is uncertainty (Howard-Jones & Demetriou, 2009). Studies in the literature show that uncertainty increases the level of engagement (Howard-Jones & Demetriou, 2009). Nevertheless, to our knowledge, no study has examined the impact of uncertainty on learning and the causal relationship between uncertainty and learning outcomes. For this reason, this study attempts to better understand this effect on learning in game-based environments. In the following section, literature review on games, flow theory, motivation, indicators of motivation in game-based learning, and uncertainty are covered.
Section snippets
Literature review
A game is defined as a rule-based system having quantifiable outcomes which are assigned to specific values (Juul, 2005). The player spends effort to influence the outcomes in the game, and as a result, the player will be happy with positive outcomes or unhappy with negative outcomes (Juul, 2003). Meaningful learning occurs when the relationships between actions of a player and the outcomes of the system in a game are “discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game” (Salen &
Participants
Participants of this study were 140 (38 female and 102 male) undergraduate students from computer engineering, software engineering, and information systems engineering departments in Atilim University with an age ranging from 18 to 28 (M = 21.80, SD = 1.58). The participants were randomly assigned to either the uncertain group (n = 71) or the certain group (n = 69). They voluntarily participated in this experiment for extra course credit.
Prior knowledge test
The prior knowledge test is a self-rating database
Results
In order to examine whether the uncertain group and the certain group differed in terms of their prior knowledge of the concept of database, an independent samples t-test was conducted. According to Levene's test, the homogeneity of variance assumption of the t-test was not met, p = 0.05. For this reason, Welch's t test, which assumes unequal variances between the two groups, was administered. This test showed that there was no significant difference in prior knowledge of the groups, t
Discussions and conclusion
The main goal of this study was to investigate the effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments. A computer-based application was designed in two versions: the uncertain and the certain one. The experimental results of this study showed that the uncertainty group outperformed the certain group, confirming that the element of uncertainty enhanced learning in the game-like environment. These findings support the predictions of Howard-Jones and Demetriou (2009). To our knowledge,
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