Abstract
The aim of this study was to examine the impact of assessing students’ achievements in a physics course in the form of a group board game. Research was conducted in two groups of 131 high school students in Poland. In each school, the research sample was divided into experimental and control groups. Each group was taught by the same teacher and participated in the same courses and tests before the game. Just after finishing the course on waves and vibrations (school 1) and optics (school 2), experimental groups took part in a group board game to assess their knowledge. One week after the game, the experimental and control groups (not involved in the game) took part in the post-tests. Students from the experimental groups performed better in the game than in the tests given before the game. As well their results in the post-tests were significantly higher statistically than students from the control groups. Simultaneously, student’s opinions in the experimental groups about the board game as an assessment method were collected in an open-descriptive form and in a short questionnaire, and analyzed. Results showed that students experienced a positive attitude toward the assessment method, a reduction of test anxiety and an increase in their motivation for learning.
Highlights
Gamification—which refers to the use of game-based elements, such as game mechanics, esthetics, and game thinking in non-game contexts aimed at engaging people
Superscripts differentiate experimental (2 ) and control group (2C ) within second school FA average former achievements, PT the result in the post-game test t test p = 0.6539 p = 0.0003 anxiety normally associated with traditional exams
We relate them to the findings commonly presented in the literature on collaborative testing and gamification
Summary
Gamification—which refers to the use of game-based elements, such as game mechanics, esthetics, and game thinking in non-game contexts aimed at engaging people, PolandRes Sci Educ (2020) 50:845–862 motivating action, enhancing learning, and solving problems—has become increasingly popular (Apostol et al 2013; Deterding et al 2011). Gamification—which refers to the use of game-based elements, such as game mechanics, esthetics, and game thinking in non-game contexts aimed at engaging people, Poland. People have been using digital games for learning in formal environments since the 1960s (Ifenthaler et al 2012; Moncada and Moncada 2014). The term of gamification was coined only a few years ago, and since has been gaining more and more popularity (Dicheva et al 2015; Sung and Hwang 2013). The benefits of gamification (or, in more broad terms, game-based learning, e.g., Ifenthaler et al 2012) in educational contexts are widely described in the literature. Among them are increasing student intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy (Banfield and Wilkerson 2014; Seaborn and Fels 2015), motivation effect and improvement of the learning process (Dicheva et al 2015; Sadler et al 2013), as well as improving the positive aspects of competition (Burguillo 2010; Conklin 2006)
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