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



McCabe and Wise, It’s All Fun and Games until Someone Learns Something: Assessing the Learning Outcomes of Two Educational Games discuss whether educational games can be designed for both learning and entertainment. It involves the evaluation of the game Tic Tac Toe and comparing it to relative achievement levels of students who played the game and players who did not play the game. They questioned the degree of the students’ proficiency in identifying citations improved as a result of playing. They had seven sections of a GCOM 103 class which is a mandatory communication class for first year students and had them take a thirty- five multiple choice test to test the student proficiency. The students were asked by their instructor to take the citation test twice, at the beginning and the end of the semester. The Magnetic Keyboard game was also tested having pre-programmed tasks for the user to complete and the amount of time it was completed, at the end the researcher could determine the search speed and if it improved with the Magnetic Keyboard.

The data was analyzed to evaluate their subjects to determine if the Tic Tac Toe game had a positive impact on student achievement. The findings within Tic Tac Toe showed the first 27 students who played the game showed a significant pretest-posttest gain, but 47 students who did not play showed significant improvement.

This research shows that it is possible to design games in which they are both fun and effective for educational purposes. This article is similar to Gumulak in which entertainment games provide much more than fun but skills that can help in learning.

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