Educational games and simulations at school: the high-school students’ experiences and attitudes: A qualitative study

Educational computer games are increasingly being used in the formal schooling system; however, it is still largely unknown which game elements (if any) have most influential effect on learning. Here, we present results that suggest that role-playing, discussions, real-world grounding and storytelling can be important game elements for increasing students’ engagement during interfacing with a game. In addition, we present results indicating that emotional graphs are a useful tool for identifying strong and/or weak aspects of a game and assessing student’s mood development during playing the game. All these results were gained during focus group discussions we conducted as a part of a complex experiment taking place at three high-schools in the Czech Republic on 372 subjects during 2011. The focus groups, results of which are presented in this paper, involved 74 students (M=37, F=37). The whole experiment is actually an exploratory study to a broader consecutive research on engagement as a variable influencing learning process and outcomes and it is theoretically grounded in Moreno & Mayer’s Cognitive-affective theory of learning with media. The exploratory study had a comparative design, it combined various quantitative and qualitative measures and it utilized three educational games: Orbis Pictus Bestialis (on the topic of animal training); Bird Breeder (genetics heredity); and Europe 2045 (political, economic, and social issues of the EU)