Effects On Self Concept Anxiety And Achievement Of A Computer Instructional Approach To Teaching Geometry To Fifth Graders

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Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (15 download)

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Download or read book Effects of Minecraft as an Instructional Tool for Teaching Geometry at the Fifth Grade Level written by and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Athough widely popular outside of the classroom, digital games are rarely utilized in schools for the purpose of improving achievement or increasing student learning. Research on digital game use has largely focused on games created for educational purposes but rarely on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) games. The purpose of this dissertation was to identify the impact the COTS game Minecraft had on student achievement in the area of geometry. A total of 74 fifth-grade participants were involved in this quasi-experimental study. Students took part in three separate cycles of interventions that included traditional instruction, play-based Minecraft, and lesson-based Minecraft. Each intervention lasted two weeks and culminated in a post-assessment. The results indicated that the Minecraft based interventions led to increased achievement when compared to traditional intervention. Additionally, there was little difference between play-based and lesson-based interventions, indicating that allowing students to play Minecraft can be just as beneficial as an intervention with lessons built around the game. Furthermore, students whose levels of abilities were high, average, and below average improved at similar rates over time. There was evidence that showed that following traditional instruction with lesson-based digital game instruction resulted in the greatest achievement gains, but this finding was observed with only two groups of students and requires further research. These results are discussed as are potential implications for K-12 educators. These implications include increasing the use of digital games into instruction, the optimal length of digital game-based interventions, and using Minecraft as a naturally differentiating tool for geometry instruction. Further implications are the potential for play-based digital games such as Minecraft to have benefits that are comparable to those benefits from teacher led digital game lessons. Directions for future research are also discussed including a recommendation for more studies focusing on COTS games as an educational tool and for research that centers on using digital games to improve problem solving and critical thinking skills.