Abstract:

The academic literature suggests that differences between male and female students regarding video gaming habits are blurring. While it persists slightly differences in media affinity regarding the use of video games -mainly based on video game genres- our research question addresses precisely if gender matters regarding the effectiveness of educational video games. To answer our research question a posttest pre-experimental design involving an educational video game designed to learn English vocabulary was used. Our main results suggest no gender differences on students´ performance while playing the educational video game (measured on students´ video game scores) nor in the test that students´ took after playing the educational video game. Despite gender differences were found in media affinity (with male student playing more video games than female students) these differences did not affect students´ performance. The main limitations of the study and future research lines are pointed out.

Keywords:

Educational video games, gamification, performance, gender, media affinity.