IP2 Pt. 1: Digital games as sources for science analogies: Learning about energy through play

Fig. 1. Image of monsters holding hands in Monster Music. (Martin et. al, 2019).

Martin, Silander and Rutter explored the relationship between digital games and student learning of scientific concepts through analogy mapping. The study was conducted using a framework that considered the importance of analogy mapping, which is to take a concept that may be difficult or unfamiliar and create an analogy to a a familiar, more understandable concept. This construction of knowledge helps students bridge their understanding from a schema they already possess. Researchers compared two student groups: the comparison group played games and received explicit instruction based on students’ activation of prior knowledge and schema-building to connect to scientific concepts through gameplay and the treatment group experienced gameplay and received instruction that activated prior knowledge about game-related knowledge but did not aim to explicitly connect students’ prior knowledge to act as a bridge between the game and scientific concepts. Researchers found that students in the comparison group demonstrated they learned more than students in the treatment group.

I find the Missing Data section of the research to be problematic: the assessments of low-income, high absentee students were not collected. However, researchers do reveal the bias and data skewing towards the full data collected from “higher-achieving students” (Martin et. al, 2019). I agree with the researchers, that though there were limitations in size of study and in the data, that results indicate that digital games can be used effectively in the classroom in promising ways to increase student engagement and learning but that teachers must be “very deliberate” in creating “scaffolded discussions” and help students bridge the gap between prior knowledge to build schema to connect to learning outcomes (Martin, et. al, 2019). Teachers need the training and time to create these opportunities that do not come simply as a result of gameplay, challenging the way games-based instruction is often delivered.

References

Martin, W., Silander, M., & Rutter, S. (2019). Digital games as sources for science analogies: Learning about energy through play. Computers & education, 130, 1-12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.11.002