Can a Serious Game Be Designed to Increase Engagement in a Mandatory Postmodern Novella at Danish Gymnasiums?

Abstract

For this study, we designed a serious game to engage Danish gymnasium students when reading the novella A Love Story, written by the prize-winning Danish author Naja Marie Aidt. The novella is mandatory reading in postmodernism. The study included 41 students from two Danish gymnasiums, who were divided into three classes. Two classes were included in the experimental study, which employed the serious game as part of reading the novella. One class served as the control group and engaged only in an analog reading of the novella. The evaluation criteria, which were assessed through a questionnaire, were based on items from the reading engagement index, the user engagement scale, and the narrative engagement scale. Furthermore, the evaluation consisted of in-depth interviews with teachers and students. The findings revealed a positive effect on students' engagement in the experimental group and the possibility for future work in the field of serious games implemented in high school curricula. The serious game developed for this study balanced challenge and skills appropriately, but it could be improved in terms of the story world and controls.

How can a foundation be outlined for a successful serious game to increase reading engagement

“…The increasing attention that video games have for learning has also been accompanied by academic attention to the educational value of games to promote reading engagement [23][24][25][26]. The previous examples of serious games targeting specifically the promotion of reading engagement [23][24][25][26] have all included and emphasized the importance of motivation, teacher involvement, emotional engagement, and minimizing cognitive overload. A) Motivation.…”

“…This involves, for example, important elements within the text's content, comprehending the text, gaining new knowledge, and social interactions with used knowledge and/or lessons learned from the text [21,22]. Furthermore, to design a motivating reading experience in a serious game, scholars have already emphasized aspects of intrinsic motivation, such as curiosity, a desire for challenge, and involvement [26,[29][30][31][32]. However, the success of a serious game for reading purposes depends on players' motivation to start playing the game and spend their time, effort, and energy.…”

“…In this study, we aim to propose both a theoretical framework and an applied design to 1) provide practitioners with a foundation and implications when developing a serious game for increasing the reading engagement in an educational context, and 2) analyze the engagement in a mandatory text read in Danish high schools by using serious gaming. In addressing these research questions, we are capitalizing on the games' abilities to promote engagement [3,[23][24][25][26][27]. It is important to emphasize that this study is not about interventions for reading skills, syntactic awareness, morphological awareness, reading speed or other competences in direct reading comprehension [28].…”