Evaluation of Gender-Relevant Differences in Students' Interest and Problem-Solving Skills Through Stunt Science Approach

Academic interest, despite its complex construct, has been the focus of many empirical studies because of its direct relationship with learning (Dopatka et al., 2020) and the reason behind the development of various learning materials, such as educational games. Some studies attempted to construct instruments in various formats (Permatasari et al., 2019), mostly survey-questionnaires, to measure students' interest in different ways, such as classroom activities and students' personal experiences (Kaur & Zhao, 2017; Lavonen et al., 2010; Eseryel et al., 2014; Maison et al., 2020). The present study started with the creation of a game-based instrument featuring the Physics behind stunt actions in movies. In an attempt to contribute additional empirical evidence to a limited number of studies relating gameplay and problem-solving skills (Eseryel et al., 2014; Kailani et al., 2019), the game was designed to simulate stunt actions through problem-solving questions taken from Physics lessons. The game contains problem-solving questions, grouped into three levels of difficulty, and was assessed for its gender-related impact on students' interest and problem-solving skills. Unlike other researches, the present study measured the academic interest of 125 secondary students (49 female, 31 male) through actualized knowledge using an educational game, instead of survey questionnaires. Results show that the game had a significant influence on students’ interest. No significant gender-related differences on students' interest was found and no statistically significant influence on the level of interest of the students towards the game has been caused by the two-way interaction of gender and the game. Playing the game showed a significant influence on the problem-solving skills of the students and accounted for 57% of their level of problem-solving abilities