Using Digital Games in Technology Oriented STEM Education: The Examination of the Students’ Game Designs

Year 2020, , 77 - 91, 01.04.2020

İsmail Dönmez , Murat Tekçe , Şerihan Kirmit

https://doi.org/10.21891/jeseh.669097

Cited By: 1

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the contents of the representations that students used while producing digital games in the scope of STEM education. The descriptive survey model among the other quantitative research methods has been used. Within the scope of this purpose, 300 games from the competition arranged throughout Turkey with the name of ‘’I encode my game’’ have been examined in terms of different variables. Checklists were created by the researchers to analyze the data. In these checklists, mental structures (abstract, concrete, mixed and simple content), the use of violent content, the characters, the subject of the game, the type of points, the dominant colors were examined. Findings show that boys were more interested in the game production process than girls while the counselors were all females. it has been found that students intensively used concrete elements and gave more importance to the educational technologies such as educational-instructional games and quiz shows. Students used human figures, animals, objects and fantasy characters as the protagonists in their games. As for the representation of the human figures, it is seen that the proportions of boys and girls were equal. Digital games in technology-oriented STEM education promote students to join the production process on a large scale. At further researches, it is thought that providing students with educational content like game encoding is highly important.

Keywords

Digital games, Education technology, Scratch, Competition, Game design

References

• Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychol Bull 136(1): 151-173. British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) (2001) Primary Schools of the Future – achieving today. Coventry: Becta. Bostan, B. & Tıngöy Ö., (2015). Digital games: Design requirements and player psychology. Academic Journal of Information Technology. 6(19). 7-21. Çankaya, S. & Karamete A. (2008). The effects of educational computer games on students’ attitudes towards mathematics course and educational computer games. Mersin University Journal of the Faculty of Education, 4(2), 115-127. Çatlak, Ş., Tekdal, M., Baz F.Ç. (2015) The status of teaching programming with scratch: a document review work, Journal of Instructional Technologies & Teacher Education, (4)3,13-25 Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2000). Research methods in education. 5th ed. London New York: Routledge Falmer Coşkun, H. (2012). The effect of science teaching and educational games with scientific stories on students' academic achievement. Master Thesis, Erciyes University, Institute of Educational Sciences, Kayseri. Demirbaş, K.Y. (2015) Problems of genre-based approaches to digital games: The case of platform games genre, Selçuk İletişim,9(1), 362-387 Horzum, M. B. (2011). Examining computer game addiction level of primary school students in terms of different variables. Education and Science, 36(159), 56-68. İşman, A. (2005). Öğretim teknolojileri ve materyal geliştirme. Ankara: PegemA Yayıncılık. Kan, D. (2010). Yeni medya aracı bilgisayar oyunlarında toplumsal cinsiyetin inşası. The Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art and Communication (4)2. 52-60 Karabak, D. & Güneş, A. (2013). Curriculum proposal for first class secondary school students in the field of software development, Journal of Research in Education and Teaching, 2(3), 175-181. Kafai, Yasmin. (2008). Considering gender in digital games: Implications for serious game designs in the learning sciences. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, CSCL. 422-429. Karasar N (2003). Scientific research method-concepts principles techniques (7th Ed.). Ankara: Nobel Madden, T.J., Hewett, K., & Roth, M. S. (2000). Managing ımages in different cultures: a cross-national study of color meanings and preferences. Journal of International Marketing, (8)4, 90-107 Malan, D. J., & Leitner, H. H. (2007, March). Scratch for budding computer scientists. Paper presented at ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education annual conference, Covington, KY. Marcelino, M. J., Pessoa, T., Vieira, C., Salvador, T., & Mendes, A. J. (2017). Learning computational thinking and scratch at distance. Computers in Human Behavior, 80, 470-477 Mitchell, A. Smith, C.S. (2004). The use of computer and video games for learning: Learning and Skills Development Agency Monroy-Hernández, A. & Resnick, M. (2008) Empowering kids to create and share programmable media, Interactions, XV, 50-53 Özdemir, T., (2005). Criteria that affect color selection in design. Çukurova University Journal of the Institute of Social Sciences, (14)2,391-402. Peppler, K. A., & Kafai, Y. B. (2007). From SuperGoo to Scratch: Exploring creative digital media production in informal learning. Learning, Media and Technology, 32, 149–166. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Game-Based Learning. New York: McGraw-Hill Resnick, L. B. (2009). Nested learning systems for the thinking curriculum. Educational Researcher, 39, 183-197. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189X10364671 Shin, S., & Park, P. (2014). A Study on the Effect affecting Problem Solving Ability of Primary Students through the Scratch Programming. Accessed at http://onlinepresent.org/proceedings/vol59_2014/27.pdf. Taylor, M., Harlow, A., & Forret, M. (2010). Using a computer programming environment and an interactive whiteboard to investigate some mathematical thinking. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 8, 561-570. [Çevrim-içi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.078, Erişim tarihi: 01.03.2015]. Uçar, T. F. (2003). Visual communication and graphic design, İstanbul: İnkılap Kitabevi Yenğin, D. (2010) Concept of violence in digital games: New violence. Marmara University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Communication Sciences, Doctoral Thesis. Yükseltürk E. & Altıok S. (2016). Pre-service information technology teachers` perceptions about using scratch tool in teaching programming. Mersin University Journal of Faculty of Education 12(1): 39-52. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17860/efd.94270 Yünkül, Durak, Çankaya & Mısırlı (2017) The effects of scratch software on students’ computational thinking skills. Necatibey Faculty of Education Electronic Journal of Science and Mathematics Education Vol. 11(2), 502-517. Zhang, H., Yang, Y., Luan, H., Yang, S., & Chua, T.-S. (2014). Start from Scratch. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Multimedia - MM ’14 (pp. 187– 196). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. http://doi.org/10.1145/2647868.2654915