Ditch Your Studies, Play Games Instead!

Let’s be real, who likes studying? At least, not me! I would rather play some video games instead, 100%! Many students like myself haven’t found their most efficient traditional studying method, and that is absolutely devastating. But fear not, the new breakthrough is here! Rather than studying the old-fashioned way, soon you might be able to learn through games! Although still developing and incomplete, I guarantee this is a promising research. Buckle up, ladies and gentlemen!

This study was conducted in Helsinki, with the 33 pre-schooler participants being in areas of “discrimination” (poor environmental factors, low parental education levels, unemployed parents-families, single parent families, and immigrant families). These kids were grouped into three, the first one being the intervention group (playing a simple math game “Lola’s World”), the second one being the control group (playing the alphabetical game “Lola’s ABC”) and the third one being the passive control group who didn’t get to play any games (sucks for them!).

(Disclaimer: I am not sponsored nor endorsed, and this is not an advetisement! This is just a visual aid to show what the game looks like.)

The three groups first took “Early Numeracy Test” (ENT) to examine their mathematical knowledge, which yielded pretty underwhelming results. Then, each and every one of their performances were taken and named the pre-study ENT scores. After, those groups of kids played the predetermined games mentioned above for 15 minutes over three weeks. And ta-da! The joyous playtime is over, it was time for them to take another ENT.

After some time, the results came out! There’s good news and bad news. Which one do you wanna hear first? I’m assuming you chose bad news. So, the results weren’t as good as expected. They didn’t see a significant difference between the post-study ENT results between those three groups. What I mean is that none of those groups stood out in terms of ENT scores after the game-playing phase. However, here comes the good news. They did see a significant improvement within the intervention group, a.k.a. the ones that played the math game! They saw how the kids playing “Lola’s World” boosted their ENT scores after the study!

The aim of this study was just to check if game-based mathematical learning was doing low-performing children any good, and behold, the study showed exactly that! More could be improved in future studies; however this study represents a valuable attempt to prove that game-based learning can support studies. It is also worth mentioning that many similar studies have been conducted and all yielded identical results. It was also heavily hinted that low performing children should be assisted more on the instructional side, not just with interactive games like “Lola’s World”. This research also opens up more opportunities to conduct similar researches, and can serve as a guideline for one!

Absolutely, this could be the answer to all of us wondering what the most efficient way of studying could be. Although still undergoing development here and there, at least for sure now we know how games can support studies through this precious study! Be happy guys, in the near future you might not need those textbooks, just games!

 

Aunio, P., Mononen, R. The effects of educational computer game on low-performing children’s early numeracy skills – an intervention study in a preschool setting. European Journal of Special Needs Education Vol. 33 No. 5, pp. 677-691 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2017.1412640

 

Cheers,

Indira Sutjipto