The influence of technology on education is significant and growing. In particular, most students in higher education now work in a learning environment that supports electronic access to course materials and perhaps controls aspects of the learning process. Within such an environment, students have greater choice as to when, where and how they study; unfortunately, however, these advantages are often offset by a reduction in student engagement. This is partly due to the quality of the learning content but equally important is the suitability of the learning environment in which that material is studied. This thesis focuses on that environment, considering, in particular, how student engagement might be improved using techniques common in digital games. In general, games succeed by entertaining players in a way that builds on their natural curiosity and competitiveness, thereby encouraging them to continue to play. Similar encouragement seems desirable in education. The thesis examines the hypothesis that student performance in e-learning can be improved by using engagement techniques from digital games. Essentially, this means enhancing technology-oriented learning environments with engaging features that occur in game design. The thesis considers the general requirements of such environments and identifies relevant engagement techniques. From this understanding, a game-oriented learning framework (GOLF) is proposed. The essence of the framework is that a game setting can promote desirable behaviour in terms of completing basic learning tasks and tackling additional challenges, with engagement further encouraged through regular feedback on performance, measured against others in the same class. It was anticipated at the outset that the design of the framework would require significant experimental evaluation and refinement so it has been produced through action research and evolutionary prototyping. A series of case studies in academia has been used in this development process. Results show that the framework can enhance, student engagement leading to improved performance. Also, as might be expected, however, there are significant soft factors involved that can have a significant impact on the benefit of the game approach and indeed determine whether or not it succeeds at all. These factors are discussed, together with suggestions for future work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:551593 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Charles, Therese |
| Publisher | University of Ulster |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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