Social studies is a class students encounter in the fourth and fifth grades of primary school in Slovenia. It includes goals from the fields of geography, sociology, history, ethnology, psychology, economy, politics, ethics, aesthetics, and ecology. Among other didactic recommendations in the national curriculum for teaching, social studies…

Efficacy of games as learning medium is of interest to researchers and the gaming industry. A critical metric for learning is knowledge retention and very few studies have conducted in-depth comparisons of: a) game versus no-game learning, b) collaborative versus individual learning. Towards this, the study reported in this article will present…

This article presents the preliminary findings of GamiLearning (2015-2018), a research project that aims to promote critical and participative dimensions of Media and Information Literacy (MIL) in children through the creation of digital games. The project presents an innovative approach by arguing that MIL can be promoted through the process of…

The main aim of this article was to investigate the educational potential of a game-based math game competition to engage students in training rational numbers. Finnish fourth (n = 59; M[subscript age] = 10.36) and sixth graders (n = 105; M[subscript age] = 12.34) participated in a math game competition relying on intra-classroom cooperation and…

Training in critical thinking is essential for the professional development of journalism students. To achieve this goal, this study developed a gamified platform and a blended learning curriculum. During an 18-week experimental instruction period, a series of instructional activities, which included online discussions as well as classroom…

In the 21st century, students have access to a plethora of information. As such, the skills required to access and effectively sort through this information (information literacy skills) become ever more important for success in both academic and non-academic settings. This study sought to assess the efficacy of two educational games designed to…

One of the benefits of using digital games for education is that games can provide feedback for learners to assess their situation and correct their mistakes. We conducted two studies to examine the effectiveness of different feedback design (timing, duration, repeats, and feedback source) in a serious game designed to teach learners about…

Gamification, or the use of game elements in non-game contexts, has become a popular and increasingly accepted method of engaging learners in educational settings. However, there have been few comparisons of different kinds of courses and students, particularly in terms of discipline and content. Additionally, little work has reported on course…

This paper aims to show best practices of GBL design for engagement. It intends to show how teachers can implement GBL in a collaborative, comprehensive and systematic way, in the classrooms, and probably outside the classrooms, based on empirical evidence and theoretical framework designed accordingly. This paper presents the components needed to…

This study introduces the concept of microgames to support situated learning in order to foster situational awareness (SA) of planners in seaport container terminals. In today's complex working environments, it is often difficult to develop the required level of understanding of a given situation, described as situational awareness. A container…

This article reports an exploratory study which investigated attitudes towards the practice of game-based learning in teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) within a Thai educational context. This self-administered Internet-based survey yielded 169 responses from a snowball sampling technique. Three fifths of respondents…

In collaborative learning scenarios, the role of the instructor is vital. This aspect directly carries over to the concept of collaborative multiplayer Serious Games, where a group of players is learning together using a Serious Game. In this paper, the authors propose a novel approach for integration and support of instructors in collaborative…

Computer games, which are currently very popular among students, can affect different cognitive abilities. The purpose of the present study is to examine undergraduate students' experiences and preferences in playing computer games as well as their mental rotation abilities. A total of 163 undergraduate students participated. The results showed a…

The genre of educational adventure games is a common and successful choice in game-based learning. The games combine captivating narratives that motivate players to continue playing with game mechanics that are conductive to learning: the gameplay is slow-paced, allowing players to learn at their own pace, and focused on puzzles that can be…

Collaborative serious games have proven to have the potential to support joint knowledge construction, and there is a growing interest in applying such games to promote high-level learning. However, most of the existing studies have focused on the effects of functional, task-specific support while ignoring the social aspects of collaborative…