Combining Software Games with Education: Evaluation of its Educational Effectiveness

TLDR

Computer games are highly popular among children and adolescents, offering a potential avenue to make educational software more attractive and motivating. This study investigates the educational scope of educational software games. We evaluated an Intelligent Tutoring System that functions as a virtual‑reality educational game, examining its effectiveness, appeal, and scope. The evaluation found that virtual‑reality educational games are highly motivating and can maintain or improve learning outcomes, especially for students who previously performed poorly in the subject.

Abstract

Computer games are very popular among children and adolescents. In this respect, they could be exploited by educational software designers to render educational software more attractive and motivating. However, it remains to be explored what the educational scope of educational software games is. In this paper, we explore several issues concerning the educational effectiveness, appeal and scope of educational software games through an evaluation study of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that operates as a virtual reality educational game. The results of the evaluation show that educational virtual reality games can be very motivating while retaining or even improving the educational effects on students. Moreover, one important finding of the study was that the educational effectiveness of the game was particularly high for students who used to have poor performance in the domain taught prior to their learning experience with the game.