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Development of a personalized educational computer game based on students’ learning styles

  • Special Issue on Personalized Learning
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Abstract

In recent years, many researchers have been engaged in the development of educational computer games; however, previous studies have indicated that, without supportive models that take individual students’ learning needs or difficulties into consideration, students might only show temporary interest during the learning process, and their learning performance is often not as good as expected. Learning styles have been recognized as being an important human factor affecting students’ learning performance. Previous studies have shown that, by taking learning styles into account, learning systems can be of greater benefit to students owing to the provision of personalized learning content presentation that matches the information perceiving and processing styles of individuals. In this paper, a personalized game-based learning approach is proposed based on the sequential/global dimension of the learning style proposed by Felder and Silverman. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a role-playing game has been implemented based on the approach; moreover, an experiment has been conducted on an elementary school natural science course. From the experimental results, it is found that the personalized educational computer game not only promotes learning motivation, but also improves the learning achievements of the students.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Mr. Li-Hsueh Yang for his assistance in developing the educational computer game. This study is supported in part by the National Science Council of the Republic of China under contract numbers NSC 99-2511-S-011-011-MY3 and NSC 100-2631-S-011-003.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Sec. 4, Keelung Rd., Taipei, 106, Taiwan

    Gwo-Jen Hwang, Han-Yu Sung & Chin-Chung Tsai

  2. Department of Information and Learning Technology, National University of Tainan, No. 33, Sec. 2, Shulin St., Tainan City, 70005, Taiwan

    Chun-Ming Hung & Iwen Huang

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  1. Gwo-Jen Hwang
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Correspondence to Gwo-Jen Hwang.

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Hwang, GJ., Sung, HY., Hung, CM. et al. Development of a personalized educational computer game based on students’ learning styles. Education Tech Research Dev 60, 623–638 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-012-9241-x

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