This thesis investigated students’ experiences of learning maths through designing computer games. Further Education (FE) students in an English FE college, based in a relatively disadvantaged socio-economic demographic area, were recruited for eliciting their conceptions of learning maths via game design. An important focus of this study is with regards to the maths skills a typical student acquires and permeating how learning maths is experienced and understood within the context of games design and development. The research question that this research attempted to address is: “What are students’ experiences of learning maths through making a computer game?” A mixed method approach was carried out for illuminating both causal effects and deeper accounts on how students experienced the phenomenon of learning maths through making a game. To this line, Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) were carried out, with a control and an experiment group, to measure the effect of game design in learning maths. To gain deeper understandings of the phenomenon, phenomenography was employed to elicit categories of description and an outcome space of the different ways students experienced learning maths through a serious game. The RCT results showed that there was an average increase in maths skills from the experimental group of 13% and the average increase in maths for the control group was 3%. This is a 10% maths increase from the experimental to control group. A t-test on the data between the pre- and post- test trials resulted in 0.003553 < 0.05, which indicates that there was a significant difference in the score gain especially between the control and the experiment group for these assignments. The phenomenographic results showed that students experienced learning maths through game design in four qualitatively different ways, as: (1) a creative approach, (2) an experimental approach, (3) a collaborative approach, and (4) a coding approach. In conjunction to the categories of description, four dimensions of variation were discerned: (1) role of the lecturer, (2) role of game idea (3) role of maths and (4) role of technology. The contribution this study makes is that it demonstrates that games design may enhance learning of maths and in particular that it delineates the qualitatively different ways a student learns maths within the context of making a game in a serendipitous learning environment. The insights gathered from these studies can help educators, not just within FE, but also in schools or universities, to develop teaching approaches to better facilitate learning maths by using the processes, features and strategies of games design-based learning within a serendipitous learning environment.
Further Education Students’ Experiences Of Learning Mathematics Through Game Design: A Serendipitous Learning Process
Gallear, W. (Author). May 2024
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy