Abstract:

Game-based learning is considered to be a promising new paradigm to better educate the present and future generations of pupils and students. In order to test for the effects of game-based learning and stimulate its deployment in Belgian schools, the three-year G4-project (“Gimme, Gimme, Gimme a Game”) of the educational department of the “KHLIM” (a university-college in Belgium) was set up.

Within this project, a first step consists of measuring and analyzing game-related behavior, and several gaming attitudes and perceptions, among two important stakeholders: pupils and secondary school teachers. In the course of 2010, we therefore surveyed 1028 pupils and 302 teachers (mostly apprentice teachers). The surveys were administered in several Belgian secondary schools.

Next to demographical characteristics, we measured factors such as: gaming frequency, attitudes towards video games, the perceived ease of use and usefulness of educational games, and their perceived learning potential. Most of the concepts are derived from the pedagogical and technology acceptance literature. Because both surveys measure the same (or very similar) concepts (developed by the same researchers), a comparison can be done in a direct and reliable way.

The results show that despite the existence of statistically significant differences in some variables, a number of similar tendencies can be derived from the data. Both pupils and teachers hold rather positive attitudes towards video gaming, with lower scores on proposed negative video gaming characteristics. Both teachers and pupils are neither negative nor really enthusiastic about the usefulness and learning potential of gaming. In both samples, significant gender differences can be found in most concepts and they exceed the differences between pupils and teachers.

The application of more advanced statistical analyses confirms a number of proposed relationships between concepts. More specifically, the gender effect is better explained and it is also shown that gaming experience, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are important determinants of the respondents’ perceived learning potential of video games. These and other findings may have valuable implications for approaching pupils and teachers to stimulate the deployment of game-based learning.

Keywords:

Game-based learning, serious games, gaming.