Abstract:

The advancement of mobile technologies has made possible a feasible way to bring students out of classroom and to perform learning activities in real settings. Research has indicated that including game schemes in mobile learning could improve the learning motivations as well as achievements. However, recent research on mobile game-based learning has mostly emphasized on the technological aspects of the game building. How these mobile game-based learning could help students learn better and who will learn better? How if learners fail to acquire the knowledge or skills that embedded within the instructional game? Any method could evaluate learner’s on-task learning performance and adaptively make proper remediation for those failed to achieve a certain learning task during the gameplay? More studies are still necessary for developing interactive and adaptive strategies for mobile game-based learning.

As early as 1980’s, researchers have found that repetitive practice-and-drill could facilitate the skill retention. Early researchers recognized that the effects of repetitive practice-and-drill attributed to the component processes and structure the use of working memory. More recently, researchers asserted that repetitive practice-and-drill could help students more concentrate on the learning tasks, and help self-diagnose the learning weakness. Although some of the criticisms on the methods of repetitive practice-and-drill have been raised, the authors of the present study believe that by taking the advantage of recent digital technologies, are able to make the repetitive practice-and-drill be more adaptive during the learning process. Especially for mobile game-based learning, adaptive practice-and-drill could be an effective method for remediating the learners who have failed to achieve specific learning task during the gameplay.

This study planned to use a quasi-experiment to explore the effects of putting in on-task practice-and-drill onto a mobile game-based learning in terms of learning immersions as well as learning effectiveness. Learning immersions include game motivation, interaction experience, and learning experience. Learning effectiveness refers to the learning achievement after the gameplay. An energy saving topics are designed to be used as the learning materials. Subjects of the study will be 4th to 6th-grade students from selected elementary schools in Taipei City. They will be randomly assigned to control group and experimental group. Multiple learning tasks will be embedded within the mobile game-based learning. In the control group, student will move on to the next task regardless of whether they have achieved the current one; the experimental group, however, instead of moving forward, the game scheme is specially designed so that learners will be informed and will be encouraged to try again if they fail to achieve the current task .

Proper instruments have been developed for data collections. Factorial ANOVA, multiple regression, and qualitative interview data analyses will be employed for explaining the research questions. The experiment is planned to be executed in the late April of this year. The results of the experiment will be reported on full paper if the present abstract is accepted. These results may benefit the field by providing alternative gaming strategies for mobile game-based learning, as well as gaining more understanding on learning immersions during the gameplay.

Keywords:

Mobile learning, game-based learning, practice-and-drill, adaptive learning.