dc.description.abstract | Game-based learning has been widely applied in education settings for recent years. Some studies indicated that game-based learning offers many benefits, e.g., cognitive growth, digital literacy, social-emotional growth, soft skills development, enhanced decision making, problem-solving skills and critical thinking. This is because game-based learning covers many game elements, such as Clear Goals, Rules, Control, Challenge, Immediate Feedback, Rewards, Interactivity, Story, Complexity. Such game elements have different characteristics, which can affect learners’ reactions to game-based learning. On the other hand, individual differences exist among learners. Among various individual differences, cognitive style is related to the way of processing and organizing information, which may make designers and evaluators focus on different game elements. Hence, there is a need to link game elements valued by designers and those valued by evaluators. Among various mechanisms, peer assessment brings many benefits to student learning because students play as both designers and evaluators.
However, paucity of research used peer assessment to examine the impacts of cognitive styles on the design and evaluation of game-based learning. To fill this gap, five research questions were investigated in this study, i.e., 1. How cognitive styles affect the scores that evaluators mark during the process of peer assessment, in terms of game proposal and game implementation? 2. How the grouping of cognitive styles affects the scores that game designers obtain during the process of peer assessment, in terms of game proposal and game implementation? 3. How cognitive styles affect the scores that evaluators mark for each cognitive style grouping, in terms of game proposal and game implementation? 4. How cognitive styles affect e relationships between scores from each evaluator, in terms of game proposal and game implementation? 5. How cognitive styles affect the comments that evaluators give for each cognitive style grouping, in terms of game proposal and game implementation?
In order to answer the above questions, the subjects of this study play as both the designers and evaluators. Regarding the former, all members were divided into three groups according to their cogitative styles, i.e., Holist & Holist (H&H), Holist & Serialist (H&S), Serialist & Serialist (S&S). Regarding the latter, the evaluators included Holists and Serialists. All members should go through two stage of this experiment. In Stage One, each cognitive group needed to make a proposal for game-based learning. In Stage Two, each cognitive style needed to implement game-based learning. More specifically, all members need to discuss how to design the game-based learning system in Stage One, which focused on two aspects, namely “Learning Material” and “Playfulness”. In Stage Two, all member should implement game-based learning, which included nine game elements, i.e., “Challenge”, “Clear goals”, “Complexity”, “Control”, “Immediate feedback”, “Interactivity”, “Rewards”, “Rules”, “Learning Material”. The nine game elements are summarized based on opinions that learners gave at Stage One.
The result of this study include scores that evaluators marks and those that designers obtain at each stage. Regarding Stage One there was no significant difference between the scores from Holists and those from Serialists. On the other hand, the scores that H&H and S&S obtained were higher than those from H&S, in terms of playfulness. On the contrary, the scores that H&S obtained were higher than those from H&H and S&S in terms of Learning Material. Regarding Stage Two, the scores that Holist marked for clear goals were higher than those that Serialists did. On the other hand, the scores that H&H obtained were higher than those from S&S, regardless of Learning Material, Challenge or Rewards. Furthermore, the scores that H&S obtained were higher than those from S&S, regardless of Learning Material, Control or Immediate Feedback.
The above results showed that cognitive styles affect game elements that designers and evaluators emphasize on. According to the above findings, a framework was proposed and it showed the influences of cognitive styles on the design and assessment of game-based learning. The framework can guide future researchers on how to design game-based learning system that meet the needs of each cognitive style group so that personalized learning can be achieved. | en_US |