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Digital game-based learning (DGBL) interventions can be superior to traditional instruction methods for learning, but previous meta-analyses covered a huge period and included a variety of different target groups, limiting the results' transfer on specific target groups. Therefore, the aim of this meta-analysis is a theory-based examination of DGBL interventions' effects on different learning outcomes (cognitive, metacognitive, affective-motivational) in the school context, using studies published between 2015 and 2020 and meta-analytic techniques (including moderator analyses) to examine the effectiveness of DGBL interventions compared to traditional instruction methods. Results from random-effects models revealed a significant medium effect for overall learning (g =.54) and cognitive learning outcomes (g =.67). Also found were a small effect for affective-motivational learning outcomes (g =.32) and no significant effect for metacognitive learning outcomes. Additionally, there was no evidence of publication bias. Further meta-regression models did not reveal evidence of moderating personal, environmental, or confounding factors. The findings partially support the positive impact of DGBL interventions in school, and the study addresses its practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Game-based learning (GBL) is widely utilised in various domains and continues to receive interest and attention from researchers and practitioners alike. However, there is still a lack of empirical evidence concerning its effectiveness, making GBL evaluation a critical undertaking. This paper proposes an integrated approach for planning and executing GBL evaluation studies and presents its application by evaluating the effectiveness of a GBL approach to improve the Arabic reading skills of migrant refugee children in an informal learning setup. The study focuses on how children's age group, learning modality preference, and prior mobile experience affect their learning, usability, and gameplay performance. A quasi-experiment with a one-group pretest-posttest design was conducted with 30 children (5–10 years old) from migrant refugee backgrounds. The results show a statistically significant improvement in their reading assessment score. The results also outline a clear impact of children's age groups on their learning gain, usability score, and total levels played. Moreover, learning modality preference and prior mobile experience both had a statistically significant effect related to usability and gameplay performance parameters. However, no effect was found on learning gain. Based on the findings, some design recommendations are suggested for more inclusive design focusing on user characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: As the concept of flipped classrooms continues to gain interest across disciplines, more research is needed to strengthen the instructional design by integrating active learning strategies and emerging technologies. Among various possibilities, little is known about how game‐based learning combined with Augmented Reality (AR) can be effectively infused into language education to establish supportive flipped learning contexts. Objectives: This study thus proposed an AR‐enhanced game‐based learning (ARGBL) approach, featuring the use of an augmented board game to engage students actively in classroom activities. It further compared the effects of the proposed approach with traditional game‐based learning on the students' vocabulary acquisition and creative thinking as they were instructed to learn English as a foreign language (EFL) in flipped classrooms. Methods: A quasi‐experimental design was adopted to examine the effectiveness of the proposed approach to promote the students' participation in flipped in‐class activities, thereby improving their learning outcomes. Participants were recruited from two classes of the same undergraduate course, one of which was designated as the experimental group to take part in game‐based learning activities in class by playing an AR‐enhanced board game, and the other as the comparison group to learn by playing a paper‐and‐pencil game with identical puzzle content. The desired student learning outcomes were measured by pre‐ and post‐intervention vocabulary tests and creative thinking tests, supplemented by individual interviews. Results: Results indicated that the students in the experimental group significantly outperformed their counterparts in vocabulary acquisition and creative thinking. They also expressed positive perceptions of the augmented game‐based learning experience in the flipped EFL classroom. Take Away: ARGBL can be a promising approach to improving student learning, and it is particularly beneficial to the design of classroom activities in flipped learning contexts due to its affordances for enriched content visualization and active learner engagement through gameplay. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Flipping the classroom is becoming prevalent in education, and researchers have stressed the need to move beyond comparing the outcomes of flipped and non‐flipped settings in order to advance innovation and examine the effectiveness of instructional design.Recent research has shown positive effects of using AR technology for content delivery, with location‐based context‐aware applications being more commonly applied in language education, while the potential of image‐based AR also warrants research attention.Learning by playing games has been considered an engaging strategy that provides benefits for learner engagement, but not all game genres have been fully studied. What this paper adds: This study proposed an ARGBL approach, applying image‐based AR to augment board gaming activities in class when the classroom was flipped.The ARGBL approach was found to significantly improve the students' English vocabulary acquisition.The ARGBL approach was found to significantly enhance the students' creative thinking development. Implications for practice: The innovative merger of image‐based AR and physical board gaming pieces into a hybrid form of mediation, namely the AR‐enhanced board game, likely encouraged face‐to‐face interaction of meaningful language use in flipped in‐class activities, thereby leading to the vocabulary growth and creative thinking development of EFL learners.The effectiveness of the ARGBL approach should be considered as an integrated whole with a holistic understanding of the interplay between the AR technology and the active learning strategy through gameplay in the broader pedagogical context of flipped classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though game elements can increase motivation and engagement, they also might distract learners and thereby decrease performance and learning outcomes. In the current study, we investigated the effects of intrinsically integrated game elements on performance and learning outcomes. In a pre-post training study, 85 adult participants were randomly assigned either to the game-based or non-game-based training condition. Participants trained their fraction magnitude understanding with digital number line estimation tasks on five consecutive days (á 15–20 min). The learning outcomes were evaluated using a paper-based number line estimation task. While participants in both the game-based and non-game-based condition improved their fraction magnitude understanding from pretest to posttest, their improvement did not differ significantly. However, during the training, participants in the game-based condition responded more accurately but were slower than those in the non-game-based condition. The current results suggest that game elements might increase participants' cognitive engagement and change their priorities or strategies (i.e., accuracy over speed) during learning. Nevertheless, better training performance did not lead to superior learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In recent years, the importance of emotions in learning has been increasingly recognized. Applying emotional design to induce positive emotions has been considered a means to enhance the instructional effectiveness of digital learning environments. However, only a few studies have examined the specific effects of emotional design in game‐based learning. Objectives: This quasi‐experimental study utilized a value‐added research approach to investigate whether emotional design applied to scaffolding in a game‐based learning environment improves learning and motivational outcomes more than emotionally neutral scaffolding. Methods: A total of 138 participants, mean age of 11.5 (SD = 0.73) participated in the study. A total of 68 participants played the base version of a fraction learning game (Number Trace), where scaffolding was provided with emotionally neutral mathematical notations, and 70 participants played the value‐added version of the game using emotionally designed animated scaffolding agents. Pre‐and post‐tests were used to measure conceptual fraction knowledge and self‐reported measures of situational interest and situational self‐efficacy to evaluate motivational outcomes. Results and Conclusions: Our results indicate that the emotional design applied to scaffolds can improve the educational value of a game‐based learning environment by enhancing players' situational interest and situational self‐efficacy. However, although the intervention improved the participants' conceptual fraction knowledge, there was no significant difference between the scaffolding conditions in participants' learning outcomes. Takeaways: The results suggest that emotional design can increase the educational impact of game‐based learning by promoting the development of interest, as well as improving self‐efficacy. Lay Description: What is currently known about the subject matter: Learning games that include scaffolding can enhance learning outcomes.Emotional design can enhance learning outcomes.Only a few studies have examined effects of emotional design in game‐based learning.There are no studies examining the effects of emotional design of scaffolding. What this paper adds to this: The study is the first to examine the effects of emotionally designed scaffolds in game‐based learning.Emotional design applied to scaffolds did not enhance learning more than emotionally neutral scaffolds.Emotional design applied to scaffolds enhanced participants' situational interest and situational self‐efficacy. The implications of study findings for practitioners: The study confirms that math games that include number line mechanics and scaffolding can be effective.The results demonstrated that emotional design of scaffolds did not harm learning.The results confirm that emotional design of instructional features is useful as it can enhance motivational outcomes.Learning effects of emotionally designed features should be examined with longer interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The development and promotion of educational games are still outpacing knowledge of these games' effects, raising calls for evidence of benefits and challenges. Studies suggest that students and teachers like games, but the payoff of the investment in terms of increased motivation and achievement remains unclear. Objectives: This study investigates the pure effect of a marketing simulation game on motivation, perceived learning and achievement, above and beyond regular student‐active instruction. Methods: We applied a randomized, controlled experiment in a marketing course in upper‐secondary schools (Nclasses = 22; Nstudents = 433) comparing a collaborative–competitive marketing simulation game with regular, case‐based, student‐active instruction on three groups of outcome measures: motivation, perceived ability, and achievement. Additionally, students and teachers provided quantitative and qualitative feedback on game experiences. Results and Conclusions: We showcase the importance of a robust study design with valid compound instruments. Moreover, investigations of the game implementation and experiences reveal insights about intervention timing, differential negative consequences by gender and need for reflection opportunities. We find no clear evidence of positive or negative effects of the game, despite students' and teachers' satisfaction. Implications: Beyond the effect evaluation, we offer recommendations to researchers and developers of educational games about scaffolding, timing and teacher competence building. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Some curricula contains many terms and complex knowledge links.Simulation games are a popular remedy for these challenges.Prior studies have relied on users' satisfaction with the game and unrealistic comparisons. What this paper adds: This experiment compares game usage and regular student‐active instruction.They use various measures of satisfaction, motivation, perceived learning and achievement.The game has no effect on main outcomes. Implications for practice and/or policy: Game implementation requires digitally acquainted and trained teachers.Uncritical game design and use may motivate competitive boys over collaborative girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature suggests that adding game elements to learning tasks indirectly influences the learning process by increasing engagement with the tasks. The present study aims to advance learning engagement research by examining an often neglected subcomponent of behavioral engagement, attrition. Implementing two equivalent versions of a learning task, differing solely in the presence of game elements, allowed unequivocal attribution of any effect on the presence of game elements. Conducting the study in an online learning environment allowed further a highly unconstrained examination of the effects of game elements on attrition. We found that game elements affected both participant attrition and engagement of participants who completed the learning task. Participants with low self-efficacy were particularly prone to drop out in the non-game condition. Game elements also affected both learning efficacy and efficiency. We further found task attractivity to partially mediate the effect of game elements on learning outcomes. The results suggest that by facilitating engagement via task attractivity game elements can compensate to some extent for the increased cognitive demand that the game elements induce. We finally discuss the importance of considering the interrelations between learner characteristics, game elements, and engagement for interpreting results on learning performance measures. • Relations between game elements, engagement, and learning outcomes are examined • Use of game elements mitigates participant dropout early in an online learning task • Learning outcomes are affected by game elements indirectly via task engagement • Participants with lower self-efficacy may benefit more from game elements • Performance gain mediated by task attractivity balances cognitive cost [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]