Cultural implications in the acceptability of game-based learning

Abstract

While game-based learning (GBL) environments have been shown to facilitate learning, in culturally diverse populations (e.g., university classrooms), GBL may only appeal to a subset of the population. We investigated how culture may relate to acceptability of GBL in undergraduate students. We performed online, survey-based research with 489 undergraduate students (66.9 % female) at a Canadian university to assess how their (1) level of Canadian identity (cultural integration) and (2) other cultural associations (e.g., East Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, European, North American) related to students' views on GBL, while adjusting for prior gaming exposure and gender. We found that perceptions of Canadian identity were strongly and positively related to views on GBL, which can be explained by Canadians' affinity to playful learning opportunities and familiarity with video-gaming. Students who identified as East Asian had the most positive views compared to all other cultural groups, irrespective of their integration in Canadian culture. Surprisingly, previous gaming exposure was negatively associated with the acceptability of GBL, though this relationship became more positive as students’ identification with Canadian culture increased. Males had overall more positive views on GBL than females. Our findings give insight into cultural considerations for the design and evaluation of GBL for international populations. Our results are limited by the small sample sizes of certain cultural sub-groups, treating ordinal variables as ratio in our regressions, and through defining and assessing culture based on geographical regions. Future research should assess culture more broadly and survey populations internationally and especially from underrepresented cultural groups.