Experimental evaluation of BeadLoom game: How adding game elements to an educational tool improves motivation and learning

Abstract

The Virtual Bead Loom (VBL) is a Culturally Situated Design Tool that successfully teaches students middle school math concepts while they learn about and create their own Native American bead artifacts. We developed BeadLoom Game to augment VBL with game elements that encourage players to apply the computational thinking skills of iteration and layering while optimizing the number of steps they take to solve a puzzle. In our prior work, we showed that BeadLoom Game is effective at teaching Cartesian coordinates, iteration, and layering. In this study, we use a switching replications experimental design to compare performance of BeadLoom Game with the VBL. Our results from two summer camps, one for middle school and one for college-bound high school students, show that through the addition of game based objectives, BeadLoom Game teaches Cartesian coordinates as well as the VBL but also teaches the computational thinking practices of iteration and layering. © 2011 ACM.