Supplementing Elementary Science Learning with Multi-player Digital Board Game: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Educational games or serious games are playing an important role to facilitate today’s student learning preferences and promote their motivation to learn in subject contents. Currently, many researchers revealed that digital game-based learning could promote students' motivation and their interest for learning by addressing abstract and complicated concept with mechanics of game. To examine a preliminary effect of supplementing primary school students’ learning in science, a multi-player digital board game has been created and then implemented to 6 third-grade students (1 male and 5 females) in a local public school in the northeastern part of Thailand. They received the board game learning experience in a 100-minutes supplementing activity after their completion of conventional science lesson on living and non-living things. The results showed that they positively accepted the learning and playing with digital board game in general science topic about living things and non-living things. Furthermore, the students expressed positive perception towards the learning by playing with the digital board game. The main contribution of this study using digital board game-based learning to enhance students learning perception in science learning.