Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

Abstract

Among ESL students, video game Educational tools offer potentially motivating, engaging and challenging formats that have started to be adopted as effective learning tools. Such games are meant to promote a better learning experience for the tech savvy millennial” generation. This study assessed the effectiveness of using the Space Prepositions game over an online worksheet as a supplementary material to facilitate learning of spatial English prepositions at the University of Phayao, Thailand. Both the control and the experiment group had the same learning environment except for the supplementary materials; that is, 68 students from the control group were given the online worksheet while 63 students from the experiment group were given the designed game prototype called Space Prepositions. All of the groups learned on the same topic, spatial prepositions. According to the results of ANCOVA, there was a statistically significant difference of 2.94 between the control and experimental groups average pretest learning outcome scores t (129) = 4.75, p < .01), but the between-subjects effects test found no statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups posttest scores after controlling for the covariate of pretest F (1, 84) = 3.864, p > .05. The findings of this research, based on the outcomes assessment, and in the context of research on Thai E-learning acceptance behavior, indicate the majority of the participants in game-based learning developed intrinsic motivation. The results found no difference in learning effectiveness between the use of the game and the online worksheet. Findings suggested different trial conditions would yield more precise performance measures and yield better results. Almost all students wanted to see these kinds of supplementary materials in future courses.

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