Experience and Explanation: Using Videogames to Prepare Students for Formal Instruction in Statistics

Abstract

Well-designed digital games can deliver powerful experiences that are difficult to provide through traditional instruction, while traditional instruction can deliver formal explanations that are not a natural fit for gameplay. Combined, they can accomplish more than either can alone. An experiment tested this claim using the topic of statistics, where people's everyday experiences often conflict with normative statistical theories and a videogame might provide an alternate set of experiences for students to draw upon. The research used a game called Stats Invaders!, a variant of the classic videogame Space Invaders. In Stats Invaders!, the locations of descending alien invaders follow probability distributions, and players need to infer the shape of the distributions to play well. The experiment tested whether the game developed participants' intuitions about the structure of random events and thereby prepared them for future learning from a subsequent written passage on probability distributions. Community-college students who played the game and then read the passage learned more than participants who only read the passage.

Supporting conceptual understanding of the associative and distributive properties through digital gameplay

“…The consensus within the games-for-learning community is that a well-designed game, properly tailored to meet instructional objectives, can serve as a viable learning environment. The native affordances of games, specifically digital games, are conducive to creating an environment where learning can take place (for instance, Arena & Schwartz, 2013;Cheng, She, & Annetta, 2015;Gee, 2003;Girard, Ecalle, & Magnan, 2013;Shaffer, 2006;Tobias & Fletcher, 2011;Van Eck, 2006;Zhang, 2015).…”

“…In recent years, digital games have been increasingly leveraged as a tool for learning (Arena & Schwartz, ; Clark, Nelson, Sengupta, & D'Angelo, ; Gee, ; Gunter, Kenny, & Vick, ; Hong, Cheng, Hwang, Lee, & Chang, ; ter Vrugte et al., ). The most compelling impetus for the use of digital games as a learning technology is the high levels of engagement and motivation reported in the literature (Shaffer, ; Tobias & Fletcher, ; Van Eck, ).…”

Video Games as Tillers of Soil

“…This alternative approach allows video games to do what they do best, which is to provide compelling experiences that invite players to engage deeply with complex simulations and to solve problems that they care about; and it allows formal instruction to do what it does best, which is to provide formal knowledge structures that explain complex phenomena with elegance and rigor (e.g., Arena & Schwartz, 2014;Coller & Scott, 2009). One way to describe this approach is that the game is providing relevant prior knowledge for subsequent formal instruction that takes place outside the game.…”

Learning Programming through Games and Contests: Overview, Characterisation and Discussion

“…For example, games are engaging (Dickey, 2005) and motivating (Prensky, 2003). They also provide a lot of experiences (Arena and Schwartz, 2013) and an excellent feedback on performances (Shute, 2011). Finally, games support very well the learner centred education (Gee, 2005).…”