Math Learning Environment with Game-Like Elements: An Experimental Framework

Introduction

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) and educational games are two research areas in educational technologies. Intelligent tutors, which are primarily concerned with cognitive aspects of learning, provide students with adaptive, individualized tutoring and have been shown to improve learning significantly (Koedinger & Corbett, 2006). On the other hand, education researchers have also been interested in computer games due to their immense popularity and affordanceof new types of interactions. Games can not only enhance the affective aspects of learning, but also hold the potential to improve cognitive outcomes of learning as well. But despite this intuitive appeal of educational games, there is not enough empirical evidence on the effectiveness of educational games (Hays, 2005; O’Neil et al., 2005; Sitzmann, 2011). Although there is a relative scarcity of evidence directly comparing the educational effectiveness of educational games vs. computer tutors, recent comparisons have found an advantage for traditional tutoring approaches over educational games (Easterday, 2011; Jackson & McNamara, 2011). However, computer tutors, although able to produce learning gains, have had difficulties in maintaining students’ interest for long periods of time, which limit their utility for generating long-term learning (Jackson & McNamara, 2011).

Given these complementary benefits, there have been considerable efforts to combine these two fields. There is an active community of intelligent educational games (Conati, 2002; Spires et al., 2011; Habgood, 2005). Some researchers have incorporated elements from games into computer tutors to make them more engaging (Jackson & McNamara, 2011), and some have incorporated instructional features such as detailed content feedback into educational games (Easterday et al., 2011).