Potential effects of a role-playing digital gaming learning system on the learning performance and motivation in a humanities course

ABSTRACT

Using digital learning content to realize learning in games is a rapidly-developing direction of interest for teachers and researchers. This study has developed a digital role-playing gaming system to review Social Studies course content to a fifth Grade class at an elementary school. It allows students to experience the historical storyline of Tamsui, located in the north of Taiwan, by playing the role of Dr. Mackay. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the potential effects of the proposed system when applied to the reviewing activity of Humanities courses. The results of the post-test scores showed that the proposed system is not superior to the traditional teaching method which uses PowerPoint-based slides with the teacher’s oral instruction, but it still enhances their overall learning performance after the reviewing activity. Moreover, the results of the questionnaire survey showed that the students who reviewed by using the proposed system showed a higher learning motivation than those reviewing with the traditional teaching method. It is therefore concluded that our role-playing digital gaming system can be used to assist the teachers’ teaching activities, because it allows the students to complete their reviewing activity by themselves, and it effectively enhances their learning performances and motivation.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital game-based learning
• role-playing game
• technology-enhanced learning
• elementary education
• humanities course

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (R.O.C) under [grant number MOST 108-251-H-031-001-MY2 and MOST-109-2628-E-027-004-MY3].

Notes on contributors

Kai-Yi Chin

Kai-Yi Chin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Data Science at Soochow University (Taipei City, Taiwan). She received her PhD degree in the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science from Feng Chia University in 2011. She has worked as an Associate Professor in the Department of Digital Humanities at Aletheia University August 2015 to July 2020, where she also be an Assistant Professor from August 2011 to July 2015. Her research interests include computer-aided learning, multimedia applications, mobile technology, ubiquitous learning, and augmented reality, wearable technology, etc. Dr Chin has published over 50 papers in international journals and conferences, and participated in many international academic activities

Yen-Lin Chen

Yen-Lin Chen received a PhD in Electrical and Control Engineering from National Chiao Tung University (Hsinchu, Tai-wan) in 2006. He worked as a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei, Taiwan), where he was worked as an Associate Professor from Feb. 2012 to Aug. 2015. His research interests include image and video processing, pattern recognition, intelligent vehicles, and intelligent human–computer interactive systems.