The effectiveness of using in-game cards as reward

Peayton Chen,Jia-Sheng Heh,Rita Kuo,Maiga Chang

doi:10.1186/s41039-017-0054-8

Abstract

The research team has developed a web-based multiplayer trading card game to allow teachers choosing cards as rewards for students who actively participate in discussions and classroom activities as well as perform well in terms of doing assignments and writing exams or quizzes. In order to verify the effectiveness of the use of in-game cards as rewards, the research team integrated the trading card game into a web-based English vocabulary learning system. Students can receive cards as rewards every time after they use the learning system. A 6-week experiment had been conducted at an elementary school with 172 fifth-grade students. The results showed that boys have higher intention of getting the in-game cards as rewards. The research also showed that the use of the in-game cards as educational rewards not only motivates students to use the vocabulary learning system but also improves their learning outcome. The research result supported the recommended process for teachers to adopt the trading card game in their courses.

Highlights

Past research shows that symbolic educational rewards sometimes are not so meaningful to students (Kohn 1999)
These results indicate that the use of the in-game cards as educational rewards can engage students in doing learning activities, no matter what original academic achievements they had earlier before the intervention; overall speaking, students’ academic achievements are improved because of the use of the in-game cards as rewards
This research describes an in-house trading card game which can be adopted by teachers and played freely by students

Summary

Introduction

Past research shows that symbolic educational rewards sometimes are not so meaningful to students (Kohn 1999). The research team has developed a discipline independent trading card game in which the in-game cards can be delivered as rewards by any teacher in any course. Cards in TCG are extendable, which means, new cards can always be designed and provided when the game needs This feature is extremely important when we want to use in-game cards as reward since we do not want to see students losing their interest just because they have seen all of the cards and have a full house collection. An open-access trading card game was developed by the research team intended for teachers delivering or giving cards to students according to their performances in different learning activities (e.g., classroom participation, discussions, assignments, quiz, exams). Conclusion is made in the “Conclusion” section with further works the research team plans to do for

Related works

Results and discussions

Findings and recommendation

Conclusion