Search results for: Games in education

The use of digital badges has become increasingly common in educational settings as an alternative assessment tool, and they are linked with student motivation and integration of gamification elements into learning environments. This study explores the perceptions of pre-service English teachers at a university of the inclusion of digital badges in an LMS used in their face-to-face courses. Seventy-nine prospective English teachers participated in the 14-week study employing a mixed method design in which data were collected through a questionnaire and open-ended questions. Quantitative data analysis suggests that the participants had positive perceptions of the use of digital badges as an integral part of their courses. Content analysis of the qualitative data generated themes demonstrating teacher candidates’ perceptions of digital badges. Overall, the study provides some implications for using digital badges as well as caveats to be taken into account in planning their use.

This article describes a learning and teaching strategy based on complexity science and explores its impacts on a higher education game design course. The purpose of the strategy was to generate conditions fostering individual and collective learning in educational complex adaptive systems. The data demonstrate that collaboration was initially challenging for students, but collective learning emerged as the course developed, positively affecting individual and team performance. The participants felt highly motivated and enjoyed working on course activities. The students' perception of progress and expertise were always high, and the academic performance was on average very good.

The goal of this study was to explore Early Childhood Education (ECE) pre-service teachers’ perceptions of technological, pedagogical, content knowledge (TPACK) development in the course Instructional Technology and Material Design, which required them to design educational computer games for ECE. The findings show that participants described initial difficulty designing educational computer games since they had limited technological knowledge (TK), design knowledge (DK), or experience designing educational computer games (TPACK). However, the participants compensated for inadequacy in a knowledge domain with help from friends, instructors, or the Internet, in addition to personal efforts to increase knowledge.

The goal of this study was to identify the gaming practices of freshmen undergraduate teacher education students. The authors also investigated how students who play games compared to non-gamers in their interest in using specific technologies for learning, their beliefs about how technology affects their learning, their orientation towards using new technologies, and their beliefs about the role of technology in their future careers.