A contextual game-based learning approach to improving students ...

Computers & Education 81 (2015) 13e25

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A contextual game-based learning approach to improving students' inquiry-based learning performance in social studies courses Gwo-Jen Hwang a, *, Li-Yu Chiu a, Chih-Hung Chen b a b

Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Sec.4, Keelung Rd., Taipei, 106, Taiwan Graduate Institute of Applied Science and Technology, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Sec.4, Keelung Rd., Taipei, 106, Taiwan

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 11 July 2014 Received in revised form 7 September 2014 Accepted 15 September 2014 Available online 23 September 2014

Inquiry-based learning, an effective instructional strategy, can be in the form of a problem or task for triggering student engagement. However, how to situate students in meaningful inquiry activities remains to be settled, especially for social studies courses. In this study, a contextual educational computer game is developed to improve students' learning performance based on an inquiry-based learning strategy. An experiment has been conducted on an elementary school social studies course to evaluate the effects of the proposed approach on the inquiry-based learning performances of students with different learning styles. The experimental results indicate that the proposed approach effectively enhanced the students' learning effects in terms of their learning achievement, learning motivation, satisfaction degree and flow state. Furthermore, it is also found that the proposed approach benefited the “active” learning style students more than the “reflective” style students in terms of learning achievement. This suggests the need to provide additional supports to students with particular learning styles in the future. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Elementary education Humanecomputer interface Interactive learning environments Teaching/learning strategies

1. Introduction Owing to the rapid advancement of information technology, technological instruction has attracted much attention. Researchers have developed diverse computer-assisted learning approaches or systems to promote the learning effectiveness of students (Li & Lim, 2008;  , Poulova , Sokolova , Pedaste & Sarapuu, 2006). In general, effective instruction is required to foster students' key competences (Simonov a & Bílek, 2013), including complex problem-solving, critical thinking, and so forth (Voogt & Roblin, 2012); furthermore, computerassisted learning which provides students with opportunities for problem solving has been shown to display a major difference in comparison with traditional direct instruction. Many researchers have recognized inquiry-based learning (IBL) as an excellent teaching approach to engage students in self-directed learning and to make learning more meaningful (Benson & Bruce, 2001; Pedaste & Sarapuu, 2006). Furberg (2009) indicated that inquiry learning environments provide potential affordances for students to interact with specific knowledge domains. Ikpeze and Boyd (2007) asserted that inquiry-based learning facilitates students' participation in meaningful activities and reinforces their critical thinking skills with the aid of technology. Moreover, Lin, Liang, and Tsai (2012) revealed that Internet-assisted inquiry activities provide students with prompts for exploration, investigation and identifying alternative ideas, and stimulate them to learn autonomously. As a consequence, IBL can be an instructional approach for stimulating students' higher-order thinking processes and promoting self-directed learning skills (Lim, 2004; Looi, 1998). Oliver (2008) further illustrated that inquiry-based learning can be in the form of a problem or task for triggering student engagement and participation. In addition, scholars consider that problem solving is one of the most meaningful and significant ways of learning and thinking (Chu, Hwang, Tsai, & Tseng, 2010; Jonassen, 1997), implying the importance of facilitating students' problem-solving ability (Hwang, Wu, & Chen, 2012). Even so, researchers have indicated that IBL is confronted with several problems in large classrooms, involving

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ886 915396558. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (G.-J. Hwang), [email protected] (L.-Y. Chiu), [email protected] (C.-H. Chen). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.09.006 0360-1315/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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the dilemmas of being time consuming to develop the learning activities, to facilitate students' learning motivation, to organize the data and to emulate the learning context (Kuhn, Black, Keselman, & Kaplan, 2000; Lee & Butler, 2003; Ucar & Trundle, 2011). The utilization of computer and network technologies has assisted in solving some of these problems. Conventional technologyintegrated IBL environments can not only provide opportunities for students to collect and analyze data and to provide explanations, but can also motivate them with the right questions and engage them in various learning activities (Lee & Butler, 2003; Ucar & Trundle, 2011); that is to say, the acquisition and application of the data for inquiry-based learning activities has been resolved. However, it remains a challenge to situate students in the real-world, especially for social studies courses; thus, it is crucial to afford students the learning situations to conduct meaningful inquiry activities (Lim, 2004). Accordingly, the development of an effective instructional approach for supporting inquiry-based learning activities has become an important and challenging topic (Raes, Schellens, de Wever, & Vanderhoven, 2012). Educational games are regarded as an effective instructional approach for promoting the learning motivation and problem-solving skills ndez-Manjo  n, 2008; Prensky, 2003). It can offer situated meaningful of students (Moreno-Ger, Burgos, Martínez-Ortiz, Sierra, & Ferna learning environments in which students acquire problem-solving abilities and enhance their knowledge while taking part in the gaming activities (Hwang, Sung, Hung, Huang, & Tsai, 2012; Kim, Park, & Baek, 2009). For example, Inal and Cagiltay (2007) emphasized that interacting during gameplay events can stimulate students' motivation; on the other hand, Kiili (2007) revealed that authenticity and learning by doing, the most important characteristics of effective educational games, can enhance students' problem-solving abilities. In this study, to facilitate students' learning effectiveness in the problem-solving learning activities, an inquiry-based educational computer game has been developed for engaging students in meaningful learning activities. 2. Literature review 2.1. Inquiry-based learning Researchers have indicated the importance of utilizing inquiry-based learning, which refers to the effect of making learning more meaningful and self-directed by means of determining the problem-solving procedures (Hwang, Tsai, & Chen, 2012; Lim, 2004). Oliver (2008) asserted that students with inquiry-based learning would be encouraged to use high-order thinking and take on more responsibility for their learning. Inquiry-based learning aims to situate students in a meaningful environment to formulate and justify explanations based on evidence, and to solve problems that could be analogous to real life (Lin et al., 2012; Shih, Chuang, & Hwang, 2010). Inquiry-based learning empowers students to conceptualize a problem and then search for possible explanations related to that problem (Olson & Loucks-Horsley, 2000) so as to enhance their high-order thinking abilities and problem-solving skills. Ikpeze and Boyd (2007) indicated that inquiry-based learning encourages students to participate in explanations, reflections, and reinforcement of critical thinking abilities by way of meaningful activities. Pedaste and Sarapuu (2006) illustrated that the inquiry-based process requires various problem-solving and science process skills, including basic and integrated skills. Moreover, Cunningham and Duffy (1996) considered problems as a stimulus of authentic activity to develop the skills related to solving the problems, including collecting information and honing one's metacognitive skills. To elaborate the benefits of inquiry-based learning activities, it is crucial to carefully design learning tasks or problems that can enhance students' learning effectiveness. Lee and Butler (2003) asserted that authentic activities are significant in promoting inquiry for the high degrees of complexity provided by natural problem-solving contexts. Thus, appropriate learning situations are needed for students to perform tasks effectively (Endsley, 2000). Researchers have demonstrated the requirements and significance of situating students in authentic environments where they can meaningfully learn via linking their prior knowledge with the real-world scenarios when participating in the learning activities (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Dabbagh & Dass, 2013). Situated cognition learning has described that learning happens in real activities while searching for equitable explanations of knowledge and inquiry activities that are the general practices of the culture (Brown et al., 1989; Hwang, Chu, Lin, & Tsai, 2011). In this study, situations need to be afforded to guide students while conducting inquiry learning activities. The progress of computer and network technologies has provided the potential benefits of inquiry-based instruction (Ucar & Trundle, 2011). Many previous studies have demonstrated positive impacts of the technology-integrated IBL environment on learning effectiveness (Hwang, Tsai, et al., 2012; Kuhn et al., 2000). Utilizing technology as a cognitive support during the inquiry-learning process can not only provide students with opportunities for developing high-order abilities, but can also motivate them with the problem-solving learning activities (Oliver, 2008; Ucar & Trundle, 2011). However, when conducting inquiry-based learning activities in conventional classrooms, it remains a dilemma to afford students the situations required to conduct meaningful inquiry activities (Lim, 2004), especially for social studies courses. Using the traditional approach, classroom environments might not be suitable to facilitate students' collection of the information necessary to carry on inquiry activities (Lee & Butler, 2003). Moreover, even in a technology-integrated IBL environment, educators still face many challenges in designing inquiry activities in a complex and ill-structured learning environment (Lim, 2004). Accordingly, in this study, an educational computer game with an inquiry-based approach is proposed to cope with these problems. 2.2. Digital game-based learning Digital game-based learning (DGBL) is a student-centered educational approach which adopts the form of simulations situating students in a learning environment (Hung, Hwang, Lee, & Su, 2012; Hwang, Yang, & Wang, 2013; Prensky, 2003). Thus, DGBL is a kind of learning context in which players compete while acquiring educational goals according to specific rules and principles, contributing to the development of their cognitive skills and their construction of knowledge, while at the same time promoting their motivation (Erhel & Jamet, 2013; Huang, Huang, & Tschopp, 2010; Moreno, 2012; Moreno-Ger et al., 2008). Moreover, Hwang, Sung, et al. (2012), Hwang, Tsai, et al. (2012), Hwang, Wu, et al. (2012) indicated that educational computer games can be considered as a situated learning environment in

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which students acquire skills and knowledge from the process of playing the games. Specifically, DGBL can afford a meaningful environment for developing students' problem-solving abilities (Kiili, 2007; Kim et al., 2009). In recent years, DGBL has been widely employed in learning, and has revealed a positive effect on motivation promotion and knowledge construction as well as the acquisition of high-order abilities. For example, Hung et al. (2012) revealed that DGBL is an effective approach for promoting learning achievement by utilizing cognitive analysis tools. Ardito, Lanzilotti, Costabile, and Desolda (2013) indicated that integrating educational games with proper traditional learning strategies can help students consolidate knowledge. Lee and Chen (2009) explored the impacts of different prompts and levels of prior knowledge on problem solving in non-routine mathematical situations, and found that prior knowledge and comprehensive mathematical ability were important factors related to the problem-solving effect. Furthermore, Kiili (2007) indicated that authenticity, collaboration and learning by doing were the key factors of effectively conducting educational games. According to previous studies, it was found that DGBL is an effective approach for constructing students' knowledge, promoting learning motivation and fostering problem-solving skills; nevertheless, there are few studies on the effects of integrating DGBL and inquiry-based learning on learning effectiveness, especially for financial courses. Although some commercial financial games are available (e.g., those at http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/games/), these games (e.g., football and jigsaw puzzle) mainly act as an interface for presenting financial learning materials or conducting assessments; however, the gaming scenarios are not related to real-world financial studies contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a contextual game specifically for financial learning. In this study, an inquiry-based educational computer game was developed and applied to the financial management unit of an elementary school social studies course to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. 2.3. Learning styles Learning styles refer to learners' consistent ways of interpreting information (Keefe, 1987). Scholars have indicated that learning styles are personal characteristics that not only represent how people learn and like to learn, but also reflect the causes of their learning behaviors (Keefe, 1987; Kolb, 1984). Based on different perspectives of interpreting learning behaviors, different learning style theories have been proposed, for example, those proposed by Keefe (1987), Kolb (1984), and Felder and Silverman (1988). In the past decades, several studies have shown the benefits of considering learning styles in educational settings (Bolliger & Supanakorn, 2011; Chen, 2014; Tseng, Chu, Hwang, & Tsai, 2008). In particular, the active/reflective, visual/verbal, sensing/intuitive and sequential/global learning style dimensions proposed by Felder and Silverman (1988) have been widely adopted in developing technology-enhanced learning systems (Filippidis & Tsoukalas, 2009; Hwang, Sung, Hung, & Huang, 2013; Klasnja-Mili cevi c, Vesin, Ivanovi c, & Budimac, 2011) since the four dimensions are highly related to the design of computer-based system interfaces or the way of presenting digital learning materials. For example, Hwang, Sung, Hung, and Huang (2013) developed a learning system that adapted the way of presenting learning materials for individual students based on the sequential/global learning style dimension. They found that the students who learned with the style-fit presentation showed better learning achievements than those who learned with the non-fit presentation. In this study, the active/reflective learning style dimension proposed by Felder and Silverman (1988) is adopted since the “active” (i.e., inclined to learn via exploring, trying and interacting with something) and “reflective” (i.e., inclined to learn via thinking in depth and receiving information passively) characteristics of students may affect their learning outcomes in contextual inquiry-based learning scenarios. Therefore, it is worth investigating the interaction of the learning style dimension and the inquiry-based learning approach in students' learning performance. 3. Research questions In this study, a contextual educational computer game was developed to situate students in inquiry contexts for social studies courses. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted to probe the effects of the proposed approach on students' learning performance and perceptions. The research questions explored in this study are shown below. (1) Can the contextual educational computer game improve the students' learning achievement in comparison with the web-based inquiry learning approach? What are its impacts on the learning achievements of the students with different learning styles? (2) Can the contextual educational computer game improve the students' learning motivation in comparison with the web-based inquiry learning approach? What are its impacts on the learning motivation of the students with different learning styles? (3) Can the contextual educational computer game promote the students' learning satisfaction degrees in comparison with the web-based inquiry learning approach? What are its impacts on the learning satisfaction of students with different learning styles? (4) Can the contextual educational computer game promote the students' flow states in comparison with the web-based inquiry learning approach? What are its impacts on the flow states of students with different learning styles?

4. Development of the contextual educational computer game In this study, a contextual game is developed by incorporating the inquiry-based learning contexts into gaming scenarios for promoting students' learning performance in social studies courses. The game is implemented with RPG Maker, a 2D role-playing game development system developed by Enterbrain Incorporation. There are several reasons for choosing the 2D system in this study. First, it is good enough for presenting the required gaming scenarios; second, it requires less computing power, and hence the developed educational games can be executed on the computers of most elementary schools in Taiwan; third, we wanted to avoid situating elementary school students in a complex 3D interface, which may increase the difficulty for them to learn with the game.

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Fig. 1. The structure of the contextual educational computer game.

Fig. 1 shows the structure of the game, which is composed of a main gaming interface, a challenging task interface and a learning guiding interface; furthermore, there are several databases, including a student portfolio database, an item bank database, a contextual drama database and a learning material database. The main gaming interface enables students to learn in various gaming contexts based on the contextual dramas in the database. The challenging task interface arranges some events for students to deal with so as to enhance the entertainment. For instance, the students need to opt for different kinds of weapons to attack monsters based on their investment characteristics. On the other hand, the learning guiding interface provides hints, learning guidance or supplementary materials, such as investment approaches and interest calculation instructions, during the gaming process. All the problems or tasks in the game are stored in the item bank database. In this study, the “financial management” unit of an elementary school social studies course is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In this unit, students need to learn the basic concepts of investment, financial management and economic activities; moreover, they are situated in various economic activities embedded in the storylines of the role-playing game so as to probe and experience the possible situations which may occur after making some decisions. Fig. 2 shows the gaming stages in the inquiry-based educational computer game. The game starts with an introduction to the background story, in which the rules and functions of the game are also presented (as shown in Fig. 3). The storyline of this game is related to a competition for which the top prize is a villa. The main character of the game is a young man whose parents are too old to work. Therefore, he starts to earn a living to support his family. One fine day, the main character accidentally discovers a scroll which provides evidence of the ways of investment and financial management as well as a prized competition. The students play the role of the young man who is challenged to carry out the mission of completing the threestage tasks and winning the competition. The reason for choosing role-playing as the gaming type is to situate students in the authentic contexts of financial problems, so that they can learn from exploring and solving problems in context. More importantly, such an approach enables the students to realize that the knowledge they have learned can be applied to some real-world contexts. Subsequently, the students are guided to engage in three gaming stages, called “Saving Island” (Stage 1), “Finances Bridge” (Stage 2) and “Investment Island” (Stage 3). In each stage, they are guided to find out the relationships between the rewards and risks of different channels of investment following the gaming storylines. Ultimately, a reflective competing activity called “Richest in the World” is held to assess the students' learning achievement. The three-stage tasks start following the introduction. In Stage 1, the system presents the first-level task for guiding students to explore the idea of the piggy bank and deposits as well as current deposits and fixed deposits. Some simulated situations are set in the learning activities. For example, as shown in Fig. 4, learners need to choose one of the three ways to save money. If they make the best choice, they can obtain a scroll and their score will increase. On the contrary, their score does not increase, and may even decrease, if they make the wrong choice. At this time, the students can retry the task after reflection. This is because the feedback of their scores can stimulate their reflection and inquiry (Hung, Hwang, Lin, Wu, & Su, 2013). Further, students can search for what they need in the scrolls at any time (as shown in Fig. 5). In Stage 2, the system displays the second-level task that requires the students to investigate the differences between deposits and investments. In addition, the students can decide on the amount of money to invest by themselves (as shown in Fig. 6), and this may lead to distinct results.

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Fig. 2. Procedure of the contextual educational computer game.

Fig. 3. Demonstrating the rules and functions of the game.

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Fig. 4. The feedback of scores when the students make choices.

In Stage 3, the system shows the third-level task for conducting students to explore the differences among a variety of investments. Students are asked to make choices among multiple channels of investment in different situations, such as stocks and funds. It is expected that they can discover the relationship between rewards and risks via the procedure for inquiry-based learning activities. After completing the inquiry tasks, a reflective competing activity is carried out in order to assist students in reviewing the learning concept. The competing activity affords some situations which the students are likely to encounter in the real world someday.

Fig. 5. The information provided by the scrolls.

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Fig. 6. Snapshot of the investment decided by the student.

5. Research design To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in this study, a pre-test and post-test designed quasi-experiment with nonequivalent groups was employed. The aim of the experiment was to compare the learning achievement, motivation, satisfaction degree and flow states of the students who learned with the contextual educational computer game and those who learned with the web-based inquiry learning approach. 5.1. Participants A total of 87 sixth graders whose average age was 12 participated in this study. They studied social studies for three hours a week in an elementary school in northern Taiwan. Two class were assigned to be the experimental group (26 males and 22 females), and the other two were the control group (19 males and 20 females). The four classes were taught by the same instructor in their regular Social Studies course; the instructor was a female teacher with more than ten years of elementary school teaching experience. All students had taken a computer course for more than two years and were familiar with web technology. 5.2. Measuring tools The measuring tools adopted in this study were the pre-test, the post-test and the questionnaires of learning style, learning motivation, satisfaction and flow state for measuring the students' perceptions of the learning activity. The pre-test aimed to assess whether the basic knowledge of finance of the two groups was equivalent before they participated in the learning activity. It consisted of 25 yes-or-no items, nineteen multiple-choice items, two fill-in-the-blank items, two matching questions and two short answer questions, giving a perfect score of 100. The post-test aimed to evaluate the students' knowledge of investment and financial management as well as economic activities. It consisted of ten yes-or-no items, fifteen multiple-choice items, three matching questions and five short answer questions, with a perfect score of 100. Both the pre-test and post-test were examined by two experts with more than 10 years' experience of teaching social studies courses. The questionnaire of learning styles originated from the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) Questionnaire, developed by Soloman and Felder (2001) based on the learning styles suggested by Felder and Silverman (1988). The original ILS consists of four dimensions, active/reflective, visual/verbal, sensing/intuitive and sequential/global, each of which includes 11 items. In this study, the ‘active/reflective’ dimension was employed, the items of which include, “I understand something better after I (a) try it out; (b) think it through; ” and “When I am learning something new, it benefits me to (a) talk about it; (b) think about it” The learning motivation questionnaire was modified based on the questionnaire developed by Hwang, Yang, et al. (2013). It consisted of seven items with a five-point rating scheme, such as “It is worth learning those things in the financial unit” and “I will actively search for more information to learn about finance”. The Cronbach's a value of the questionnaire in the original study was 0.79, showing acceptable reliability in internal consistency. The questionnaire of satisfaction degree of using the learning approach was adopted from Chu et al. (2010). A total of 7 items (e.g., “I like to learn with the learning approach” and “I would recommend this learning approach to others”) make up the questionnaire. The Cronbach's a value of the questionnaire stated by the original study was 0.89, implying good reliability in internal consistency. The questionnaire of flow states was modified from the measure developed by Kiili, de Freitas, Arnab, and Lainema (2012). It consisted of nine items with a five-point Likert rating scheme, such as “The user interface of the learning system was easy to use. I could easily find all the necessary functionalities and information” and “I really enjoyed the playing experience. It was so gratifying that I want to capture it again for its own sake.” The Cronbach's alpha value of the questionnaire proposed by the original study was 0.78, implying acceptable reliability in internal consistency.

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5.3. Experimental procedure The experiment was conducted on the “deposits and investments” unit in an elementary school social studies course, which aimed to enhance the abilities of the students' financial management. The procedure of the experiment is shown in Fig. 7. Before the experiment, both groups of students were taught by the same teacher about the basic knowledge of the financial unit. Following that, the students took the pre-test and the measure of learning styles; moreover, a pre-questionnaire of learning motivation regarding financial knowledge was conducted. The learning activities were conducted for a period of 120 min. The learning materials and tasks for both the experimental and control groups were the same. During the learning activity, the students in the experimental group learned with the inquiry-based educational computer game. On the other hand, those in the control group learned with the web-based inquiry learning approach that had been used in the selected school for a number of years. That is, they were situated in a web-based learning environment to complete the same learning tasks. Moreover, during the learning process, they were provided with the same learning materials in the form of digital videos or animations and were allowed to search for information on the web to complete the learning sheet, as shown in Fig. 8. After the learning activity, all students took the post-test and filled out the post-questionnaires of learning motivation, satisfaction degree and flow state. In addition, the researchers interviewed the students to collect their opinions about the learning approach. 6. Experimental results 6.1. Learning achievement Students' learning styles have attracted much attention from researchers in recent years. Researchers have suggested that providing personalized learning content or support is one of the most important features of the various educational approaches (Tseng, Chu, Hwang, & Tsai, 2008). Accordingly, this study investigated the impact of the proposed approach on the learning achievements of the students with different learning styles. The students were classified into active and reflective learners based on their questionnaire ratings. A two-way ANCOVA was employed by using the pre-test scores of learning achievement as a covariate, learning approaches (educational computer game/conventional inquiry-based learning) and learning styles (active/reflective) as independent variables, while the post-test scores of learning achievement were a dependent variable. After verifying that the assumption of homogeneity of regression was not violated with F ¼ 1.36 (p > 0.05), the post-test scores of the four groups were analyzed with the two-way ANCOVA. As shown in Table 1, it is found that a significant effect was observed for the interaction between dependent variables (F ¼ 5.56, p < 0.05, h2 ¼ 0.063) on the students' learning achievements, implying that a simple main-effect analysis was required to explore the effects of the learning approaches on the learning achievements of the students with different learning styles. Table 2 shows the descriptive data on the adjusted post-test scores of learning achievement of all four groups, while Table 3 shows the result of the simple main-effect analysis. It is found that the active learning style students who learned with different learning approaches revealed significantly different learning achievements (F ¼ 21.31, p < 0.001, h2 ¼ 0.321). That is, the contextual game had significantly better positive effects (Mean ¼ 86.01; SD ¼ 5.48) on active style students' learning achievements than the web-based inquiry learning approach (Mean ¼ 75.81; SD ¼ 13.43), while no significant difference was found between the learning achievements of the reflective style students who learned with the two approaches. On the other hand, with regard to the impact of different learning approaches on the learning achievements of active and reflective style students, a significant difference (F ¼ 4.67, p < 0.05, h2 ¼ 0.094) was found between those of the two learning style students who learned with the contextual educational computer game, whereas no significant difference was found between those who learned with conventional inquiry-based learning. That is to say, the students with an active learning style (Mean ¼ 86.01; SD ¼ 5.48) benefited more than did those with a reflective learning style (Mean ¼ 81.78; SD ¼ 10.22) when learning with the contextual educational computer game. Fig. 9 shows the interaction between the learning approaches and learning styles for the students' learning achievements. It demonstrates that situating students in contextual gaming scenarios with inquiry-based learning tasks had a significantly better influence on their

Fig. 7. The experiment procedure.

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Fig. 8. Snapshots of the web-based learning sheet and learning materials for the control group.

Table 1 Results of two-way ANCOVA on students' learning achievement. Source

SS

df

MS

F

h2

Learning approaches Learning styles Learning approaches  Learning styles Error

820.86 0.61 372.17 5489.02

1 1 1 82

820.86 0.61 372.17 66.94

12.23** 0.00 5.56*

0.130 0.000 0.063

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.

Table 2 The descriptive data of the learning achievements of the students who learned with different learning approaches. Learning styles

Learning approaches

Adjusted mean

Std. error.

N

Active

Contextual educational computer game Conventional inquiry-based learning Contextual educational computer game Conventional inquiry-based learning

86.01 75.81 81.78 80.41

1.49 1.62 1.88 2.14

26 22 22 17

Reflective

Table 3 The simple main-effect analysis of students' learning achievement. Variables Learning approaches Active Reflective Learning styles Contextual educational computer game Conventional inquiry-based learning *p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001.

SS

df

MS

F

h2

1222.63 17.37

1 1

1222.63 17.37

21.31*** 0.23

0.321 0.006

257.22 119.43

1 1

257.22 119.43

4.67* 1.50

0.094 0.040

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Fig. 9. Interaction between the learning approaches and learning styles for learning achievements.

learning achievements than learning with conventional inquiry-based activities. What is more, the contextual game-based learning approach benefited the active learning style more than it did the reflective learning style students. 6.2. Learning motivation Two-way ANCOVA was employed to analyze the students' learning motivations by adopting learning approaches (contextual educational computer game/conventional inquiry-based learning) and learning styles (active/reflective) as independent variables, while the postquestionnaire ratings of learning motivation were the dependent variable, and the pre-questionnaire ratings of learning motivation were the covariate. As shown in Table 4, the two-way ANCOVA result shows that the effect on the interaction between learning approaches and learning styles was not significant (F ¼ 0.74, p > 0.05). Thus, it is reasonable to directly evaluate the main effects of the dependent variables. A significant effect was found on the post-questionnaire ratings of the students who learned with the two approaches (F ¼ 4.56, p < 0.05, h2 ¼ 0.053) by excluding the pre-questionnaire ratings, while no significant difference was found on those of the students with different learning styles. Furthermore, the adjusted means of the contextual game group and the conventional inquiry-based learning group were 4.07 (SD ¼ 0.49) and 3.85 (SD ¼ 0.57), respectively. This implies that the contextual educational computer game could improve the students' learning motivations more than the web-based inquiry learning approach. 6.3. Satisfaction degrees of using the system Table 5 shows the two-way ANOVA results of students' satisfaction with using the system. No significant impact was found on the interaction between learning approaches and learning styles (F ¼ 0.03, p > 0.05). In the meantime, it was found that significant effects were proved for learning approaches (F ¼ 9.30, p < 0.01, h2 ¼ 0.101), and learning styles (F ¼ 7.01, p < 0.05, h2 ¼ 0.078) on the students' satisfaction with using the system. The mean values and standard deviations of the students' satisfaction degree scores were 4.21 and 0.69 for the contextual educational computer game group, and 3.73 and 0.88 for the conventional inquiry-based learning group. This implies that the contextual educational computer game could promote the students' satisfaction with participating in the learning activity. On the other hand, the mean values and

Table 4 Results of two-way ANCOVA on students' learning motivations. Source

SS

df

MS

F

h2

Learning approaches Learning styles Learning approaches  Learning styles Error

1.01 8.6E-6 0.16 12.13

1 1 1 82

1.01 8.6E-6 0.16 0.22

4.56* 0.00 0.74

0.053 0.000 0.009

*p < 0.05.

Table 5 Results of two-way ANOVA on students' satisfaction degrees of learning. Source

SS

df

MS

F

h2

Learning approaches Learning styles Learning approaches  Learning styles Error

5.37 4.04 0.02 47.90

1 1 1 83

5.37 4.04 0.02 0.58

9.30** 7.01* 0.03

0.101 0.078 0.000

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.

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Table 6 Results of two-way ANOVA on students' flow state. Source

SS

df

MS

F

h2

Learning approaches Learning styles Learning approaches  Learning styles Error

4.36 2.35 1.47 41.70

1 1 1 83

4.36 2.35 1.47 0.50

8.68** 4.67* 2.92

0.095 0.053 0.034

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.

standard deviations of satisfaction ratings were 4.18 and 0.74 for the active style students, and 3.76 and 0.85 for the reflective style students, implying that the active learning style students showed higher satisfaction with the learning activity than the reflective students. 6.4. Flow states The flow theory is a design principle of providing a general enjoyment model, elaborating the process of the occurrence of experience enjoyment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991; Kiili, 2006). Flow is related to the elegant balance between challenge and skills (Barzilai & Blau, 2014), implying the expectation of situating players in gaming scenarios with enjoyable challenges at an adequate level of difficulty. Thus, it is worth exploring the flow states that take place during the process when students conduct inquiry learning activities. A two-way ANOVA was conducted on the flow state of the students. As shown in Table 6, no significant impact was found on the interaction between learning approaches and learning styles (F ¼ 2.92, p > 0.05), implying that directly investigating the main effects of dependent variables is sensible. The significant effects were confirmed with learning approaches (F ¼ 8.68, p < 0.01, h2 ¼ 0.095) and learning styles (F ¼ 4.67, p < 0.05, h2 ¼ 0.053) on the students' flow state. The flow state of the contextual educational computer game group (Mean ¼ 3.99; SD ¼ 0.76) was significantly higher than that of the conventional inquiry-based learning group (Mean ¼ 3.52; SD ¼ 0.70), suggesting that the contextual game facilitated the balance between the task challenges and the students' knowledge levels. On the other hand, the flow state of the active learning style students (Mean ¼ 3.93; SD ¼ 0.74) was significantly higher than that of the reflective learning style students (Mean ¼ 3.58; SD ¼ 0.77), showing that the active style students learned in a more enjoyable manner than the reflective style ones. 6.5. Interviews with the students To further understand the student's perceptions of the learning activities, twenty students (ten students from each group) were randomly selected for interviews. The interview questions were modified from the questionnaire designed by Hwang, Yang, Tsai, and Yang (2009), such as “ Which part of the learning activities would benefit you the most?” All interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed by the researchers. From the interview results of the experimental group, it can be concluded that the students considered the helpfulness of the contextual educational computer game as “providing entertainment,” “enhancing achievement” and “situating them in meaningful learning.” In terms of “providing entertainment,” all students shared the same opinion that such a learning approach was fun and could improve their learning motivation. For example, A7 revealed that “This learning approach, which offered the details of financial management, was more fun than the conventional teaching approach which provided the common conceptions.” A9 also indicated that “Learning with games is fun for most elementary school students, and it interests me in learning.” From the perspective of “enhancing achievement,” seven students (A1, A3, A4, A6, A7, A9 and A10) reported promotion of their learning achievement in the process of playing the contextual educational computer game. For instance, A4 mentioned, “It helped me to discover the knowledge via playing the contextual educational computer game”; and A7 mentioned, “Such a learning approach made the conceptions of financial management clear.” Regarding “situating them in meaningful learning,” seven students indicated that the financial management course has become more critical and meaningful to them than ever because of being situated in the gaming scenarios. For instance, five students (A3, A4, A6, A8 and A10) indicated, “The learning tasks were well designed and close to the real world, thus it was easy to learn from the gaming materials.” Besides, A10 indicated, “Financial management has become very important.” On the other hand, some of the control students stated, “It would be wonderful if these tasks could been expressed in the real world.” Thus, it is particularly important to incorporate situated learning in inquiry-based learning activities. 7. Discussion and conclusions In this study, a contextual educational computer game was developed to support the financial management unit of the Taiwanese elementary school social studies course with an inquiry-based learning approach. A learning activity was conducted and its effectiveness evaluated. From the experimental results, it was found that the proposed approach significantly improved the students' learning achievements, learning motivations, satisfaction degree and flow state, in particular, for those active learning style students. From the feedback of the experimental group, it was found that most of the students considered that the contextual educational computer game suited them in a “meaningful learning” manner, and helped them realize the importance of the learning content by connecting what they were learning to real-world scenarios. Scholars have asserted the demand for situating students in authentic environments where they can meaningfully experience and learn (Brown et al., 1989; Tsai, Tsai, & Hwang, 2011). This could be the reason why the contextual game significantly improved the students' learning achievements. The result complies with the view expressed by Lee and Butler (2003) that authentic activities are critical for promoting inquiry owing to the fact that they afford natural problem-solving contexts. In the meantime, this also explains why the students who learned with the contextual educational computer game showed higher learning

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motivation, satisfaction degree and flow state than those who learned with the web-based inquiry learning approach. Such a finding conforms to what has been reported by several previous studies, suggesting that the educational computer game promoted not only the students' degree of satisfaction (Hwang, Sung, Hung, & Huang, 2013; Hwang, Sung, Hung, Yang, & Huang, 2013; Hwang, Yang, et al., 2013) but also their flow state (Chang, Wu, Weng, & Sung, 2012). Furthermore, Erhel and Jamet (2013) and Huang et al. (2010) also indicated that gaming scenarios could promote students' learning motivation and engage them in learning activities in an enjoyable manner. Moreover, the students with active learning style outperformed those with reflective learning style in terms of learning achievement when using the contextual educational computer game. As indicated by Felder and Silverman (1988), an “active learner” is someone who is better at doing something in the external world by explaining or testing it in some way. Thus, it is reasonable to infer that the proposed approach, which offers students opportunities to explore in the gaming contexts, provides them with challenges in the gaming tasks and allows them to retry the task based on the feedback from the system, was more beneficial to those active style students who tend to learn by doing, than to the reflective style learners. The proposed approach can be applied to other applications by substituting the scenarios and learning materials; therefore, one of our future research plans is to apply the approach to other courses, such as mathematics, natural science and language courses. On the other hand, although the experimental results show that the contextual educational computer game was beneficial to the students in terms of improving their inquiry-based learning performance, the findings are mainly based on the data collected from a single school; therefore, more experiments on social studies courses need to be carry out in the future to examine whether the same results are replicated in other parts of the world. In addition, there are several challenges to be coped with in the future. First, it takes time for teachers to prepare proper contexts for specific course content without support; therefore, it is important to develop supporting tools for teachers. Moreover, it would also be interesting to analyze students' inquiry behaviors in each gaming stage. 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