Impact of Gender on Students' Classroom Engagement, Flow Experience and Learning Outcomes When Game-Based Answering Activities Are Integrated into the Curriculum

Abstract

Many studies pointed out that when game-based answering activities are integrated into lecture teaching courses, students’ classroom participation, flow experience, and learning effectiveness could be improved. However, some studies have also pointed out that gender differences could affect students’ classroom participation, flow experience and learning effectiveness when learning in physical classrooms or on the Internet. This study explores the impact of gender differences on students’ classroom participation, flow experience, and learning effectiveness when the Kahoot game-based answering platform is integrated into lecture teaching courses. The subjects of the experiment were 31 students in the 12th grade of a senior high school in central Taiwan who were taking the “Arts and Life-applied Music” course. They are between 17 and 18 years old. Among them, there are 15 boys and 16 girls. The results showed that girls’ classroom participation and flow experience were significantly better than boys’. However, in terms of learning outcomes (gain scores), girls are slightly better than boys, but not at a significant level. This study speculates that it may be because the theme of “Arts and Life-applied Music” is biased towards the field of music art, and girls are more interested in knowledge in this field. In addition, in the Kahoot game, because girls have better language skills, even if they use mobile phones to answer in class, the girls had a lot of speeches and discussions. During these processes, it is easier to strengthen the learning impression invisibly. On the other hand, boys tended to think in silence and reduced their interaction in language communication, and rushed to answer. This contrasts with the rational classroom atmosphere of boys and girls and boys tend to be more rational.