What do children and early adolescents say they do when playing an educational digital game?

Abstract

We examined fourth through seventh graders' reported behaviors while playing a digital game and their reflections about those behaviors after playing. Students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions in which participants were to think about what they were learning while playing (metacognitive); about how much they liked the game (affective); or no goal (control condition). Students then were trained to think aloud as they played a coding game for 10 consecutive minutes. Following gameplay, students indicated what they learned and remembered while playing. All comments were coded for reference to cognitive processes, specific game aspects, and participants’ evaluations of the game or their gameplay. Sixth- and seventh-graders outperformed and made more references to cognitive processes than the younger students. Those in the affective condition performed worse than those in the control condition. Seventh graders referenced cognitive processes more than fourth graders during the game. Notably, across all participants reference to rules about how to play the game showed an initial spike and then immediately decreased. Overall, the findings elucidate how pre- and early adolescents may think about their game-based learning, which may inform how they use that learning outside game contexts.