McCabe. 2009. It's All Fun and Games until Someone Learns Something: Assessing the Learning Outcomes of Two Educational Games


The purpose of this research was to find whether or not educational games could be both fun and useful in improving students’ abilities to find information.

Two games were designed for this study: Citation Tic Tac Toe and Magnetic Keywords. Citation Tic Tac Toe was a computer game that had the same set-up as a regular tic tac toe game but each box had a citation in it. The computer asked players to choose a type of citation for a journal, book, etc. If the player chose the correct box it would be marked with an X, but if they didn’t it would be marked with an O. If the player managed to get three adjacent Xs they would win the game. The effectiveness of this game was assessed through choosing some classes to use this game and others that wouldn’t be playing it and then comparing their results. First both classes took a pretest on identifying citations. Then, the classes selected to play the game would play Citation Tic Tac Toe. Lastly, all students would take a post test and the results were analyzed. Magnetic Keywords was a game in which there were three keywords among twenty distractors. The students had to pick out the key words and then points were rewarded according to how many they got correct, with two points for getting all the words, one point for getting some of the words, and zero points for missing all the keywords. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this game people were chosen to play the game while doing provided online searches using a program that allowed those doing the research to watch their interactions with the program. Participants were asked to do four searches, stating whether they were satisfied with their results after each search. They were then asked to play the game and identify the keywords in four search phrases. After playing the game, participants did four more searches and then were asked to rank how fun they found the game to be, if they would recommend it to a friend, and to provide feedback on how the game might be improved. The time it took for participants to be satisfied with their results prior to playing the game was compared to the time it took after playing the game.

This compares to other articles I’ve read on using video games for education well in that in other articles it was stated that the effects of video games were beneficial but this article was different in that the participants played the game hoping to learn something whereas in the other articles the effects of popular games that were played simply for entertainment were analyzed.

The keywords this article contains are: games in education, information literacy, and game assessment.
The useful articles were:

Association of College and Research Libraries. Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Chicago: American Library Association, 2000.

de Freitas, Sara, and Martin Oliver. ʺHow Can Exploratory Learning With Games and Simulations Within the Curriculum Be Most Effectively Evaluated?ʺ Computers & Education 46.3 (2006): 249‐64.

Steinkuehler, Constance, and Sean Duncan. ʺScientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds.ʺ Journal of Science Education & Technology 17.6 (2008): 530‐43.


The questions this article raises for me are:

Do you learn more from games when you are unaware of the learning process?

Is it possible to make a game that is built for education fun?

Did the people who didn’t enjoy the game not like it due to its connection to education?

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