A mixed-method approach on digital educational games for K12: Gender, attitudes and performance

Effie Lai Chong Law, Tim Gamble, Daniel Schwarz, Michael D. Kickmeier-Rust, Andreas Holzinger

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingPaper published in a conference proceedingspeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Research on the influence of gender on attitudes towards and performance in digital educational games (DEGs) has quite a long history. Generally, males tend to play such games more engagingly than females, consequently attitude and performance of males using DEGs should be presumably higher than that of females. This paper reports an investigation of a DEG, which was developed to enhance the acquisition of geographical knowledge, carried out on British, German and Austrian K12 students aged between 11 and 14. Methods include a survey on initial design concepts, user tests on the system and two single-gender focus groups. Gender and cultural differences in gameplay habit, game type preferences and game character perceptions were observed. The results showed that both genders similarly improved their geographical knowledge, although boys tended to have a higher level of positive user experience than the girls. The qualitative data from the focus groups illustrated some interesting gender differences in perceiving various aspects of the game.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHCI and Usability for e-Inclusion - 5th Symposium of the Workgroup Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Engineering of the Austrian Computer Society, USAB 2009, Proceedings
Pages42-54
Number of pages13
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2009
Event5th Symposium of the Workgroup Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Engineering of the Austrian Computer Society, USAB 2009 - Linz, Austria
Duration: 9 Nov 200910 Nov 2009

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume5889 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference5th Symposium of the Workgroup Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Engineering of the Austrian Computer Society, USAB 2009
CountryAustria
CityLinz
Period9/11/0910/11/09

Keywords

  • Attitude
  • DEG
  • Digital educational game
  • Gender differences
  • Performance
  • User experience
  • UX

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