Pre-service teachers’ learning and frustrations during the development of serious educational games (SEGs) for learning biology

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore pre-service teachers’ learning and frustrations during the development of serious educational games (SEGs) for learning biology. A two-credit, 18-week-long course, entitled Computers in Teaching and Learning Biology was offered in fall semester of 2012. A total of 12 pre-service teachers registered in this course –and in-depth interviews with every pre-service teacher were conducted after the conclusion of semester. According to their responses, we found that most of them expressed positive attitudes towards this course but still had some difficulties and challenges in taking this course. Pre-service teachers generally reflected that the instructional time of the course was too short causing that they still didn’t really know how to program and code using ActionScript3.0. Discussions regarding the obtained results and suggestions for future work are further provided.