A Comparison between Online Quizzes and Serious Games: The Case of Friend Me

Abstract

The rapid changes in digital technology have had a substantial influence on education, resulting in the development of learning technologies (LTs) such as multimedia, computer-based training, intelligent tutoring systems, serious games, social media, and pedagogical agents. Serious games have demonstrated their effectiveness in several domains, while there is contradictory data on their efficiency in modifying behavior and their possible disadvantages. Serious games are games that are specifically created to fulfill a primary goal other than entertainment. The objective of our study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a serious game designed for the self-assessment of students concerning their knowledge of web technologies on students with an equivalent online quiz that uses the same collection of questions. The primary hypotheses we stated were that those utilizing the serious game would experience better results in terms of engagement, subjective experience, and learning compared to those using the online quiz. To examine these research questions, the IMI questionnaire, the total number of completed questions, and post-test grades were utilized to compare the two groups, which consisted of 34 undergraduate students. Our findings indicate that the serious game users did not have a better experience or better learning outcomes, but that they engaged more, answering significantly more questions. Future steps include finding more participants and extending the experimental period.