The effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments - Ozcelik & Cagiltay - 2013 - Article

What is this article about?

In schools, one of the biggest challenge is to motivate students. Learning tasks are often rated as to boring, too easy, or decontextualized. To motivate students, learning games have been designed. Computer and video games are also suggested to increase the motivation and engagement of players, because they include elements such as play, fantasy, curiosity, challenge, competition, cooperation, and learner-control. However, there is insufficient research to examine the effect of those individual elements on motivation and learning. One of the features that has not been studied is uncertainty. Uncertainty seems to affect the level of engagement, but no study has looked at how uncertainty impacts learning and what the causal relationship between uncertainty and learning outcomes is. Therefore, in this paper, the authors try to understand this effect of uncertainty on learning in game-based environments.

What does the literature tell us?

In games, meaningful learning occurs when the relationship between the actions of a player and the outcomes of the system in a game are ‘discernible and integrated into the larger context of the game’. Games have been shown to increase motivation and engagement. They are said to produce more effective learning, because they bring about more fun, appeal, and learner-centered environments. But why is this? There are several reasons suggested. First, in order to move to higher levels in the game, the gamers need to use prior knowledge, transfer that information into new situations, apply information in correct contexts, and learn from immediate feedback. Games can help learners to apply, synthesize, and think critically about what they learn through active and social participation.

Games can also provide flow experiences, making individuals feeling absorbed in the game. Flow is defined as ‘a state of consciousness that is sometimes experienced by individuals who are deeply involved in an enjoyable activity’. When people are in an optimal flow experience, they are in such a psychological state that they do not care about the environment. They also lose track of time, surroundings, and the actual environment the are in. Several studies suggest that there is a relationship between learning and excitement / flow in games.

To achieve flow and learning in games, the ARCS model can be used. The ARCS model stands for Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. This means that attention should first be drawn to the relevant stimuli and should be sustained during instruction. Interesting visuals can attract attention. The second element, relevance refers to how well the learning activities are related to the students’ goals, learning styles, and prior experiences. This means that teachers should discover their students’ interests and needs and incorporate them into their instructions. Confidence is about the level of the students’ confidence and expectancy to be successful. For this, instruction should be designed so that success is attainable with realistic effort and ability. The last element, satisfaction, refers to students’ anticipation and experience of positive feelings about the outcomes of the current learning task. To accomplish this, intrinsic and extrinsic reinforcements should be provided in learning environments,.

Even though different studies have shown that games improve learning, there are not so many examples of such games in higher education. The guidelines for developing such games are also limited. In this paper, the authors try to better understand the effect of uncertainty on learning through games. They developed a game-like environment to teach concepts on Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERD), which is a main database design tool in relational database systems. There are two versions of the learning environment: one includes uncertainty, and the other includes no uncertainty.

What were the results?

The results in this study showed that the uncertainty group outperformed the certain group. This confirms that the element of uncertainty enhanced learning in the game-like environment is of effect. This was the first study to demonstrate that uncertainty improves learning outcomes by using a game-like environment. The results also showed that there is a positive relationship between uncertainty in a game-like environment and motivation among its players. The results can also explain why playing games can become addictive: uncertain events induce an increase in the release of dopamine. Dopamine is implicated in addictive behaviour. This means that the addictiveness of games may be related to the release of dopamine when the outcomes are uncertain. The effects of uncertainty on learning may be influenced by gender. For example, women compared to men are more averse to risk and uncertainty in all domains, except social risk.
 

What can be concluded?

The results of this study can have implications for educational designers to create more effective game-like environments. By using design factors such as uncertainty, the positive effect of game-like environments can be improved. This can help to create better game-based learning environments.