Wait and see? Studying the teacher's role during in-class educational gaming

Abstract

The increasing use of social network sites (SNSs) entails several privacy risks. Therefore, a multitude of educational interventions have been developed to raise risk awareness amongst teenagers and to change unsafe behavior. However, most of these interventions are developed from a formal educational perspective. We hypothesized that traditional courses to teach about risks on SNSs are less effective to increase awareness and to change unsafe behavior, as they are further away from real life SNSs, which are mostly used as entertainment during leisure time. Moreover, an important added value of teacher involvement during educational game play in class was hypothesized. A quasi-experimental study was set up in 11 secondary classes, involving 80 pupils divided over 4 conditions. In these conditions, 4 different interventions were compared, in which pupils: (1) played a serious game on a tablet computer without teacher involvement, (2) played a serious game on a tablet computer while the teacher summarized the learned content every five minutes, (3) received a traditional course on privacy risks and (4) received a course on a different topic (control condition). In a pretest-posttest survey, we measured risk awareness, pupils’ attitudes towards risky behavior, and their behavior. Moreover, qualitative data from open questions in the survey established whether pupils were aware of the topic of the game and the course, and what they had actually learned. The results revealed that all interventions caused an increase in awareness compared to the control conditions. Moreover, a better attitude towards safe behavior was found, but this increase was equal over conditions. No impact could be found on pupils’ behavior. Finally, qualitative results showed that pupils in the condition with teacher involvement were more aware of the topic of the game than those who played the game without teacher involvement. This research clearly shows that more efforts should be put in the evaluation of educational games in a real-life classroom setting, not only to find out whether these games are effective, but also to find out how they should be implemented and what the role of the teacher should be.

The increasing use of social network sites (SNSs) entails several privacy risks. Therefore, a multitude of educational interventions have been developed to raise risk awareness amongst teenagers and to change unsafe behavior. However, most of these interventions are developed from a formal educational perspective. We hypothesized that traditional courses to teach about risks on SNSs are less effective to increase awareness and to change unsafe behavior, as they are further away from real life SNSs, which are mostly used as entertainment during leisure time. Moreover, an important added value of teacher involvement during educational game play in class was hypothesized. A quasi-experimental study was set up in 11 secondary classes, involving 80 pupils divided over 4 conditions. In these conditions, 4 different interventions were compared, in which pupils: (1) played a serious game on a tablet computer without teacher involvement, (2) played a serious game on a tablet computer while the teacher summarized the learned content every five minutes, (3) received a traditional course on privacy risks and (4) received a course on a different topic (control condition). In a pretest-posttest survey, we measured risk awareness, pupils’ attitudes towards risky behavior, and their behavior. Moreover, qualitative data from open questions in the survey established whether pupils were aware of the topic of the game and the course, and what they had actually learned. The results revealed that all interventions caused an increase in awareness compared to the control conditions. Moreover, a better attitude towards safe behavior was found, but this increase was equal over conditions. No impact could be found on pupils’ behavior. Finally, qualitative results showed that pupils in the condition with teacher involvement were more aware of the topic of the game than those who played the game without teacher involvement. This research clearly shows that more efforts should be put in the evaluation of educational games in a real-life classroom setting, not only to find out whether these games are effective, but also to find out how they should be implemented and what the role of the teacher should be.

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