Lee, Luchini, Michael, Norris, & Soloway (2004) More than just fun and games: Assessing the value of educational video games in the classroom


The purpose of this article was to find whether educational video games could be integrated into a classroom in order to help both the teacher and the students.

This article started by discussing the difficulties of introducing games into learning environments which includes having people see games as learning tools and not toys and also developing software that will have educational value. This article talked about the development of a game which was designed to help students become better at solving math problems. This game was then introduced into two classrooms, a total of 39 second graders, in which the teachers were free to incorporate the games however they wanted. One teacher used the game as a warm up activity and the other used it as a reward for students who completed their work early. The game was in the classrooms for nineteen days before the effects of the game were analyzed. After this the average amount of math problems solved per students was found and it showed that students were completing three times the amount of problems prior to the introduction of this game.

This relates to the article Design of Educational Multiplayer Videogames: A Vision from Collaborative Learning as this also focused on the design of games to accomplish different learning objectives.

The keywords were: handhelds, gameboy, education, learner-centered design

Some useful articles were:

Bransford, J.L., Brown, A.L. and Cocking, R.R. (eds.) How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 2000.

Okan, Z. Edutainment: is learning at rist? British Journal of Educational Technology, 34 (3). 255-264.

Provenzo, E. Video kids: Making sense of Nintendo. Harvard University Press, 1991.

Rosas R, Nussbaum M, Cumsille P, Marianov V, Correa M, Flores P, et al. Beyond nintendo: design and assessment of educational video games for 1st and 2nd grade students. Comput Educ 2003; 40:1.

Some questions I have after reading this article are:

How could limiting the students to only one avatar have changed the findings of this study?

Is it beneficial that students were solving more problems if they were using the tools in the game to help them to solve them faster?

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