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Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p22353"

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  • Liikanen, Elena (2023)
    Objectives: Are serious games enjoyed by the students, are they effective for learning and who exactly benefits from them? These questions are raised by the scientific evidence on enjoyability and effectiveness of serious games being contradictory. In parallel, there is a practical need to ensure that everyone has similar opportunities to thrive in school. The purpose of this thesis was to compare learning with serious games and traditional instructional style. Temperament and enjoyment were decided to take into account in the analysis, as both possibly play a role in learning with either of the instructional styles. Enjoyment has also been claimed to play a role considering the effectiveness of serious games, and it is also important from a student satisfaction point of view. Hence, it was also investigated which instructional style (game or traditional learning) students enjoy more. Lastly, the connection of temperament and enjoyment was investigated. Methods: Altogether 66 Finnish fourth grade students participated in the study, 31 in the control group and 35 in the intervention group. Class teachers were instructed to either take up a serious game website called Loru Games for learning multiplication and division (intervention group) or keep teaching as normally (control group) for the period of two weeks. In both groups, teachers were sent links to pre- and post-tests assessing multiplication and division skills. Teachers also filled in temperament (EAS: Emotionality, Activity, Sociability) questionnaires about the students. Paired samples t-tests were run to investigate which instructional style was enjoyed more. Correlational analyses were run to examine the connection between temperament and learning with either instructional style and the possible connection between enjoyment and temperament. Results: The participants in the intervention group rated game learning significantly higher compared to the traditional instruction. It was also found that there was no association between enjoying either of the instructional styles and temperament. Lastly, it was found that the participants’ learning scores (post-test scores) were not associated with temperament or instructional style. Based on this study It seems that serious games are an enjoyable learning method for the students and it does not seem that there is a need for concern about only some students reaping the benefits of either of the instructional styles, at least where temperament is concerned.