Learning Health Concepts through Game-Play

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of type of game-based inquiry learning (guided-inquiry vs. open-inquiry) on elementary students' attitudes and performance while learning from playing an influenza prevention digital game. There were 47 sixth graders participated in the experimental activity. Participants were randomly assigned to the guided-inquiry group and the open-inquiry group. The preliminary analysis suggested that (a) for the learning performance, game-play enhanced the students' health concepts in influenza prevention knowledge, and the open-inquiry group demonstrated higher performance than the guided-inquiry group did; and (b) as for the learning attitudes, all participants showed positive attitudes toward learning from game-play. The results indicated that the open-inquiry strategy is more suitable for the time-demanding game-paly condition than the guided-inquiry strategy.