Play It Safe: An Educational Cyber Safety Game for Children in Elementary School

Abstract

The objective of this research is to measure the effectiveness of a game-based learning approach for cyber safety education for children in elementary school. To date, few cyber safety games have been developed and evaluated for elementary school children. To address this gap in knowledge, we developed a novel cyber safety computer game and conducted a study with elementary school children ranging from age 7 to 10 (n=49). Children were taught concepts of cyber safety through either our plain TEXT, our interactive E-LEARNING website, or our GAME. Knowledge increased significantly more in the group that played the game, indicating that elementary school children can learn about the concepts of cyber safety more effectively through a game-based learning approach compared to traditional text and/or e-Learning based approaches.