Improving learning computer architecture through an educational mobile game

Abstract

Many studies have reported the efficiency of using educational games to teach a particular subject. With the rapid growth of mobile technology, mobile devices have become very popular and have reached a very high spread. This allowed educational mobile games to gain an increasing attention from researchers and practitioners in the learning field. At the same time, many learners find learning the computer architecture subject dry and hard using the traditional way in classrooms. This paper presents an educational mobile game to provide an interactive, motivating and a mobile learning experience of the computer architecture subject. Twenty seven undergraduate learners participated in evaluating the game using three instruments, namely technology acceptance model questionnaire, 5 stars rating method and interviews. The obtained experimental results showed that these learners were very satisfied and motivated to learn computer architecture using this designed educational game. Besides, they reported that they are willing to use it again in the future.

Implicit modeling of learners’ personalities in a game-based learning environment using their gaming behaviors

“…Therefore, compared to these proposed systems presented in Table 6, our proposed framework is the only one that combines both the learning and fun sides while implicitly modeling personality. In addition, most of these systems, including ours, refer to the FFM personality model, since it is the most used one in computer based learning environment (Tlili et al 2016a(Tlili et al , 2016b.…”

“…In order to predict learners' personalities, various personality models have been proposed in the literature, such as Myers Briggs (Myers et al 1985) and Hans Eysenck (Eysenck 1990), but one of the most used and prominent psychological model is the Five Factor Model (FFM) (Franić et al 2014;McCrae and John 1992;Tlili et al 2016aTlili et al , 2016b. FFM contains five dimensions which describe diversities of people (Chittaranjan et al 2011), namely extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience.…”

“…Personality modeling in computer-based learning Tlili et al (2016aTlili et al ( , 2016b found that questionnaires are the most used method in the literature to model the learners' personalities in computer-based learning environments. Questionnaires are a self-report measure where learners have to select the statements that best describe them (Ganellen 2007).…”

“…In this context, 67% of American learners learn using digital games in classrooms (Statista 2018). Game-based learning (or also digital games for learning) are used to deliver several pedagogical objectives, such as learning English (Wu and Huang 2017), artificial intelligence (Denden et al 2017a), mathematics (McLaren et al 2017 and computer architecture (Tlili et al 2016a(Tlili et al , 2016b. Huizenga et al (2017) highlight several important elements that contribute to cognitive learning outcomes in game-based learning, namely: (1) learning in safe environments which means that learners can try new things without worrying about the consequences of their actions, hence they can learn from their mistakes; (2) receiving direct feedback about their choices; and, (3) active learning which means that learners can make more than one trial, hence they can correct their errors if needed.…”

“…Besides, one of the important factors to consider in game-based learning is the learners' individual characteristics which make them behave differently while learning and playing. Tlili et al (2016aTlili et al ( , 2016b stated that the main important indicator of individual differences is personality. Several studies show that personality differences can affect preferences for game genres (Schimmenti et al 2017), playing style (Bartle 2004) and learning strategies (Pavalache-Ilie and Cocorada 2014).…”