Research shows that high levels of engagement help students learn more effectively, feel better about their learning, and improve retention rates. One reason why students report low engagement is a perceived disconnect between theory (what they learn in class) and practice (what happens in the outside world). This paper reports on the results of a…

Massive and timely screening of the student population for early signs of reading difficulties is needed to implement timely effective remediation of these difficulties. However, traditional approaches are costly and hard to apply. Here, we present Lexiland, a tablet-based reading assessment tool for kindergarten and primary school children…

This paper describes a growth mind-set intervention with Junior Cycle Coding students in a disadvantaged school in Ireland. This intervention builds on the work of O'Rourke et al. (2016) and applies findings to a computer programming setting where gamification is used to incentivise growth mind-set behaviour in students learning to code. Data…

This study aimed to examine the effects of a physical education teacher education programme on (a) preservice teachers' (PSTs') specialised content knowledge (SCK), and (b) the game-play development of their students, during a student-centred Sport Education-Step Game Approach (SE-SGA) unit. Three PSTs selected by convenience sampling (22-24 years…

Background: Despite the interest and potential of multi touch devices, there are limited published studies researching their effectiveness and usability specifically with children with Down syndrome, one of the most common groups of children with an intellectual disability. This is particularly true for mathematical learning, an area in which many…

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of Minecraft-based coding activities on computational thinking (CT) of middle school students. In the study, CT was conceptualized so that it encapsulates not only the knowledge of computational concepts (e.g., loops and conditionals) but also the use of CT practices (e.g., testing and debugging).…

Learning activities are at the core of every educational design effort. Designing learning activities is a process that benefits from reflecting on previous runs of those activities. One way to measure the behaviour and effects of design choices is to use learning analytics (LA). The challenge, however, lies in the unavailability of an…

This study developed a teaching module that incorporated the Monty Hall problem to introduce conditional probability in a college introductory statistics course. This teaching module integrated a guess -- experiment -- discussion approach with game-based instruction. The researchers piloted this module and made modifications. The work of 20…

Online video games have become popular among teenage students and have drawn the attention of both parents and teachers in Nepal. We report an analysis of secondary students' experiences of playing online video games and parents' perception of their children's game behaviour. We employed online semi-structured interviews with students and parents,…

The study was attempted to determine the efficiency of the card game named 'MedTerm' upon the students' achievements of the medical terms. The research was one group pre-test and post-test without control group research design and the study group elected by using the convenience sampling method consisted of the first-year students (n=46) elderly…

This book offers various ways in which analyzing professional experience and activity in simulation training makes it possible to describe practice-based learning affordances and processes. Research has been conducted in various simulation programs in the domains of healthcare, victim rescue and population protection, involving healthcare workers,…

Game-based learning (GBL) environments are shown to support open-ended inquiry, collaborative learning, shared knowledge creation and decision-making processes. The study at hand focuses on examining students' descriptions of problematic situations and collaborative learning in a virtual simulation game. We were interested in what kinds of…

Teachers have positive attitudes toward the use of gamification in the classroom yet research shows that it is implemented inconsistently. Furthermore, specific elements of what makes gamification successful with students has not been studied. The purpose of this study was to explore teacher perceptions of gamification and its use in the K-8…

This dissertation provides an in-depth linguistic description and analysis of the discourse in a target domain of digital games, a domain referred to as "single player offline role-playing games." Gaming discourse from this domain is represented by a 4.8-million-word corpus of spoken and written language extracted from the digital files…

One approach to teaching game design to students with a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds is through team game projects that span multiple weeks, up to an entire term. However, open-ended, creative projects introduce a gamut of challenges to novice programmers. My goal is to assist game design students with the planning stage of their…