Abstract:

This research study aims to understand and analyse the role of a digital game as a teaching resource, in the mathematics classroom, and the benefits it can bring for students’ motivation, interest, acquisition of concepts and skills development, and consequently for their school achievement. The pedagogical intervention performed with the digital game, as educational resources, was applied in a classroom. The intervention took place between January and February of 2020, in a class of 8th Graders with students aged 13 to 14 years old, in a school of the northeast of Portugal. The digital game designate by “Handman Game” was created by the first author taking into account the characteristics of the students.

The following research questions guided the development of the study: Can the use of a digital game be a factor of students’ motivation and promote the interest for mathematics? The use of a digital game in classroom with a pedagogical strategy, facilitate the acquisition and understanding of mathematical concepts?

In this study was adopted a methodological approach focused on the analysis of data collected by the teacher during the execution of the tasks proposed to students in the classroom, through the application of a questionnaire to the whole class and with the results obtained by the students in the assessment tests about the topics explored in the game used.

The research results show that the digital game “Handman Game” promoted students' motivation and interest in the topics taught and have a positive effect on learning and on students’ assessment outcomes. The digital game used in this investigation contributes to an increase in students’ confidence about their ability to learn mathematics and in their commitment to this subject. Furthermore, the results also suggest that digital games can be useful for teaching and learning mathematical concepts, in particular, when they are seen by students as a challenge.

Keywords:

Digital Game, Motivation, Learning, Mathematics classroom.