Effects of Educational Video Games on Elementary Students' Science Achievement: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of digital educational video games on    grade III students of public elementary schools of District Faisalabad. Employing a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control-group design, 74 male students (control n = 35; experimental n = 39) drawn from two intact classes participated in the study. In the experimental group, science was taught using an educational video game, and in the control group, using conventional lecture-based teaching. A constructed-achievement test, developed by the researcher and used by the researchers, which was validated by subject experts and has an item reliability coefficient of .75 was given as the pretest and posttest in a two-week intervention period. There were no statistically significant (all p > .05) pretest differences between the groups on total scores or on any cognitive subscale, confirming baseline equivalence. After the intervention, the mean scores of the experimental group were significantly higher than those of the control group in terms of total achievement t (72) = 52.56, p < .001, η2 = .97, comprehension (η2 = .95), analysis (η2 = .95), and synthesis (η2 = .78). In this sense, the results suggest that digital game-based learning in elementary science education can result in significant short-term learning gains, even for higher-order cognitive skills (analysis and synthesis) and can be understood within the framework of constructivist and experiential learning approaches. Implications for researchers, classroom teachers, and education policymakers with respect to curriculum integration, teacher professional learning, and the scale up to game-based pedagogy in resource poor settings are discussed alongside limitations due to sample size, length of intervention, and single district sampling