Evaluation of educational games in the teaching of academic content: A systematic literature review

Abstract

This study aimed to make a systematic literature review of empirical studies that evaluated the effect of educational games on learning academic subjects comparatively analyzing the effects of studies with different research designs. In the review, we included empirical articles and case reports that evaluated games as an intervention method for teaching formal school content, that mentioned or contained previously defined keywords and were published in English or Portuguese from January 2006 to September 2019. Initially, 171 records were localized, and 24 were selected based on the inclusion criteria. It was found that: children were the main participants; electronic games were the most used; and mathematics was the discipline used in most studies. In 13 studies group design was employed and it was found that the experimental group showed better academic performance when compared to the control group. In all 11 studies that used a single-case design, the post-test performance was greater than that of the pre-test. These results show that games affected increasing students’ academic performance.