Emotional impact and performance in serious games: investigating computational thinking in inclusive education

Abstract

Serious games have the potential to improve teaching and learning processes by attracting, inspiring and motivating students’ interest. By using educational games, students can develop skills that encompass the computational thinking, enabling students to solve real problems. Given the importance of the development of computational thinking for all students, including those with disabilities, this article aims to evaluate the impact of the insertion of serious games on teaching and learning basic computational thinking concepts in inclusive education. We analyze and correlate the emotional and performance aspects, in order to emotional and performance aspects can contribute to better interactions among students in inclusive education and interaction barriers can impact negativelly on task performance and playability. For this purpose, we selected two serious games and recruited nineteen students with special needs to perform a set of tasks in each game. We measured the emotional and performance aspects through the Geneva Emotions and performance wheel. The results indicate a strong correlation between positive students’ emotions and good students’ performance, significantly impacting the accomplishment of tasks and playability of games.