A contextual game-based learning approach to improving students' inquiry-based learning performance in social studies courses
Introduction
Owing to the rapid advancement of information technology, technological instruction has attracted much attention. Researchers have developed diverse computer-assisted learning approaches or systems to promote the learning effectiveness of students (Li and Lim, 2008, Pedaste and Sarapuu, 2006). In general, effective instruction is required to foster students' key competences (Šimonová, Poulová, Sokolová, & Bílek, 2013), including complex problem-solving, critical thinking, and so forth (Voogt & Roblin, 2012); furthermore, computer-assisted learning which provides students with opportunities for problem solving has been shown to display a major difference in comparison with traditional direct instruction. Many researchers have recognized inquiry-based learning (IBL) as an excellent teaching approach to engage students in self-directed learning and to make learning more meaningful (Benson and Bruce, 2001, Pedaste and Sarapuu, 2006). Furberg (2009) indicated that inquiry learning environments provide potential affordances for students to interact with specific knowledge domains. Ikpeze and Boyd (2007) asserted that inquiry-based learning facilitates students' participation in meaningful activities and reinforces their critical thinking skills with the aid of technology. Moreover, Lin, Liang, and Tsai (2012) revealed that Internet-assisted inquiry activities provide students with prompts for exploration, investigation and identifying alternative ideas, and stimulate them to learn autonomously. As a consequence, IBL can be an instructional approach for stimulating students' higher-order thinking processes and promoting self-directed learning skills (Lim, 2004, Looi, 1998).
Oliver (2008) further illustrated that inquiry-based learning can be in the form of a problem or task for triggering student engagement and participation. In addition, scholars consider that problem solving is one of the most meaningful and significant ways of learning and thinking (Chu et al., 2010, Jonassen, 1997), implying the importance of facilitating students' problem-solving ability (Hwang, Wu, & Chen, 2012). Even so, researchers have indicated that IBL is confronted with several problems in large classrooms, involving the dilemmas of being time consuming to develop the learning activities, to facilitate students' learning motivation, to organize the data and to emulate the learning context (Kuhn et al., 2000, Lee and Butler, 2003, Ucar and Trundle, 2011).
The utilization of computer and network technologies has assisted in solving some of these problems. Conventional technology-integrated IBL environments can not only provide opportunities for students to collect and analyze data and to provide explanations, but can also motivate them with the right questions and engage them in various learning activities (Lee and Butler, 2003, Ucar and Trundle, 2011); that is to say, the acquisition and application of the data for inquiry-based learning activities has been resolved. However, it remains a challenge to situate students in the real-world, especially for social studies courses; thus, it is crucial to afford students the learning situations to conduct meaningful inquiry activities (Lim, 2004). Accordingly, the development of an effective instructional approach for supporting inquiry-based learning activities has become an important and challenging topic (Raes, Schellens, de Wever, & Vanderhoven, 2012).
Educational games are regarded as an effective instructional approach for promoting the learning motivation and problem-solving skills of students (Moreno-Ger et al., 2008, Prensky, 2003). It can offer situated meaningful learning environments in which students acquire problem-solving abilities and enhance their knowledge while taking part in the gaming activities (Hwang, Sung, et al., 2012, Kim et al., 2009). For example, Inal and Cagiltay (2007) emphasized that interacting during gameplay events can stimulate students' motivation; on the other hand, Kiili (2007) revealed that authenticity and learning by doing, the most important characteristics of effective educational games, can enhance students' problem-solving abilities. In this study, to facilitate students' learning effectiveness in the problem-solving learning activities, an inquiry-based educational computer game has been developed for engaging students in meaningful learning activities.
Section snippets
Inquiry-based learning
Researchers have indicated the importance of utilizing inquiry-based learning, which refers to the effect of making learning more meaningful and self-directed by means of determining the problem-solving procedures (Hwang, Tsai, et al., 2012, Lim, 2004). Oliver (2008) asserted that students with inquiry-based learning would be encouraged to use high-order thinking and take on more responsibility for their learning. Inquiry-based learning aims to situate students in a meaningful environment to
Research questions
In this study, a contextual educational computer game was developed to situate students in inquiry contexts for social studies courses. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted to probe the effects of the proposed approach on students' learning performance and perceptions. The research questions explored in this study are shown below.
- (1)
Can the contextual educational computer game improve the students' learning achievement in comparison with the web-based inquiry learning approach? What are its
Development of the contextual educational computer game
In this study, a contextual game is developed by incorporating the inquiry-based learning contexts into gaming scenarios for promoting students' learning performance in social studies courses. The game is implemented with RPG Maker, a 2D role-playing game development system developed by Enterbrain Incorporation. There are several reasons for choosing the 2D system in this study. First, it is good enough for presenting the required gaming scenarios; second, it requires less computing power, and
Research design
To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in this study, a pre-test and post-test designed quasi-experiment with non-equivalent groups was employed. The aim of the experiment was to compare the learning achievement, motivation, satisfaction degree and flow states of the students who learned with the contextual educational computer game and those who learned with the web-based inquiry learning approach.
Learning achievement
Students' learning styles have attracted much attention from researchers in recent years. Researchers have suggested that providing personalized learning content or support is one of the most important features of the various educational approaches (Tseng, Chu, Hwang, & Tsai, 2008). Accordingly, this study investigated the impact of the proposed approach on the learning achievements of the students with different learning styles. The students were classified into active and reflective learners
Discussion and conclusions
In this study, a contextual educational computer game was developed to support the financial management unit of the Taiwanese elementary school social studies course with an inquiry-based learning approach. A learning activity was conducted and its effectiveness evaluated. From the experimental results, it was found that the proposed approach significantly improved the students' learning achievements, learning motivations, satisfaction degree and flow state, in particular, for those active
Acknowledgments
This study is supported in part by the National Science Council of the Republic of China under contract numbers NSC 101-2511-S-011 -005 -MY3 and NSC 102-2511-S-011 -007 -MY3.
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