The purpose of this study is to examine the role of Minecraft-based coding activities on computational thinking (CT) of middle school students. In the study, CT was conceptualized so that it encapsulates not only the knowledge of computational concepts (e.g., loops and conditionals) but also the use of CT practices (e.g., testing and debugging).…

Student fluency in mathematics is important, as fluency supports mathematics proficiency and achievement. While fluency can be supported with flashcards and worksheets, it can be supported by games. In this exploratory study, researchers examined the relationship between students' fluency on addition with regrouping problems and playing a virtual…

Online video games have become popular among teenage students and have drawn the attention of both parents and teachers in Nepal. We report an analysis of secondary students' experiences of playing online video games and parents' perception of their children's game behaviour. We employed online semi-structured interviews with students and parents,…

This dissertation provides an in-depth linguistic description and analysis of the discourse in a target domain of digital games, a domain referred to as "single player offline role-playing games." Gaming discourse from this domain is represented by a 4.8-million-word corpus of spoken and written language extracted from the digital files…

We are witnessing an excitement about digital games and related immersive media as these become ever more prevalent in the world. Governments, private companies, and research institutes are investing in these technologies in hopes of transforming education. However, while scholarship on digital game-based learning has been steadily growing over…

The fifth-grade boys at an elementary school in Texas consistently perform lower than girls on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) reading portion. The gender gap in reading is not exclusive to this school. Boys score lower than girls on state-administered reading assessments each year in the United States (U.S.) and have…

Agency, or the capacity to take intentional actions, is considered one of the primary affordances of virtual reality (VR) for learning. VR is expected to increase learners' agency because it allows for full-body interactivity from a first-person perspective, giving them novel ways of interacting with the digital environment. Yet, agency in…

This dissertation detailed the ways by which stakeholder interactions affected interdisciplinary curriculum development in the novel field of esports at Mideast State University. Due to the prevalence of esports in higher education, the sudden popularity of the esports field, and the role of esports in an already overloaded curriculum space, this…

Background: Goal setting has been established in the literature as a critical component of self-regulated learning and for effective problem-solving. Yet, surprisingly little attention has been focused on goal-directed behaviour in digital game-based learning environments (GBLEs) despite their expanding use in educational contexts. Objectives: The…

Although research has investigated the association between pathological gaming and academic performance in adolescence, the complexity of the relationship has not been thoroughly examined. This short longitudinal study aimed to investigate the interactions between pathological gaming, academic self-efficacy, academic initiative, and academic…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an online, multi-component intervention (video modeling, online mathematical games, self-monitoring checklists, and least to most prompting) in teaching mathematics skills to autistic secondary school students using a multiple probe design across skills. This study is unique from previous…

The present study investigates how social media and screen time usage negatively affect High School students' body image and overall perception of confidence. It was found that screen time is a neutral factor when considering how deeply it affects one's confidence. Almost no matter what, students seem to end up worse, whether that be…

This study explored the relationship between digital gaming and creativity by conducting a meta-analysis of effect sizes using data from 78 effect sizes in 19 studies encompassing 3,172 samples. We employed a two-level multivariate model with a robust variance estimator and conducted separate analyses for between-subject and within-subject…

We present a tool, one that is both a stand-alone web-based video game and a Python package, designed for students to explore a particle's wave function on one-dimensional potential surfaces. The tool relies on a basis set formalism and can, therefore, explore any one-dimensional potential surface imaginable. This tool also lets students interact…

Video games have become an important element of contemporary life. The need to use them in the field of education has given rise to the appearance of serious video games, which have been specially designed to achieve objectives at different educational levels and generate spaces for educational innovation. The purpose of this work is to…