The Effectiveness of Adaptive Digital Games for Learning: Calling for a Broader View on Assessment

Abstract

Digital games for learning have been introduced as a motivating way for children to learn as they can provide immediate feedback, embed the learning content in an attractive narrative, and adapt item difficulty to learners’ performance in the game. Although studies showed positive benefits of using digital educational games compared to other teaching methods, a systematic assessment of the effectiveness of digital games for learning is lacking. In this paper, we reflect on two intervention studies in which we investigated the effectiveness of digital games for learning with integrated adaptivity. Based on this work, we propose an extension of the framework of All and colleagues [5] for assessing digital games for learning including cognitive, noncognitive, and efficiency outcomes. We added aspects of study design that need to be considered such as learner, intervention, and measurement characteristics. The validation and adoption of this framework may contribute to more standardized procedures to assess the effectiveness of digital games for learning.