Eye-Tracking in Educational Game Design.

Educational game research tends to rely too often on behavioral activity rather than cognitive activity. How learning happens is methodologically very challenging to point out and thus it is usually avoided. In this paper we tackle the game based learning process with eye-tracking method. In particularly, the study focuses on exploring the meaning of cognitive feedback in game based learning process. Based on perceptual data we evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive feedback and identify game elements that may hinder the learning process. The results indicated that players' perception patterns varies a lot and some players even miss relevant information during playing. It seems that what sooner the player notices the cognitive feedback and grasps it meaning that better (effectively) they can play the game. The signaling method should be used strongly enough to highlight all the necessary elements. On the other hand, extraneous elements should be eliminated from the game world in order to avoid incidental processing in crucial moments. The results also showed that eye-tracking can provide important information from game based learning process and game designs. However, we have to be careful when interpreting the eye movement data, because we cannot be sure if the player understands everything that he or she is paying attention to. Thus, eye-tracking should be complemented with offline methods. In this study retrospective interview was used as a complementary method and it turned out to be very useful and increased the validity of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]