As discussed before, although serious games have the primary purpose of educating or training, they are also designed to provide entertainment and leisure (Davidson, 2008). It is commonly believed that the psychological factors of engagement, flow, immersion and motivation are the characteristic to an effective game and a learning experience (Hamari et al.,2016). The ability a game has to create engagement is essential for making it entertaining. This power of engagement has inspired many students to investigate their opportunities of learning (Kiili, 2005; Van Eck, 2007; Whitton, 2009). Engagement is defined by Benyon and colleagues (2005): “Engagement is concerned with all the qualities of an experience that really pull people in – whether this is a sense of immersion that one feels when reading a good book, or a challenge one feels when playing a good game, or the fascinating unfolding of a radio drama.”. Three types of engagement have been identified recently: the behavioural, cognitive and emotional (Paris et al., 2004) which should be correlated in a game-based learning environment (Pellas, 2014). Hamari and Koivisto (2015) confirm that a system should have the right amount of hedonic dimensions (excitement, fun and pleasure) in order to influence customer engagement.
Games offer a mode of interactivity where human- computer interactions take place providing the experience of self-efficacy and flow that motivate and engage players (Breuer & Bente, 2010). Flow experience is essential for engagement, it is defined by Harper and Row (1990) as “the state in which people, are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it”. Crisp (2014) assumes that game-based learning becomes a method to invoke engagement and flow in students. According to the flow theory introduced by Csikszentmihalyi (1990), the main two elements of flow are challenge and skills. Those elements are speculated to anticipate engagement which on its part is believed to anticipate perceived learning. In serious games, the focused concentration required by intrinsically interesting and challenging activities are often combined with the pleasure perceived while maximally utilizing player’s skills (Csikszentmihalyi & Schneider, 2000). Thus, the main condition for flow experience to occur is driving players to use high level of skills to satisfy a significant challenge in order to avoid apathy, relaxation, or anxiety (Strati et al., 2012). There is a considerable disagreement among researchers about the relationship between immersion in the game and learning. Thompson et al. (2012) stated that the nature of immersion that characterizes flow experience has relationship to learning and related emotions. According to Cheng, She, and Annetta (2015), the immersion has a positive effect on learning, this is the case especially when players have high gaming skills. However, the results of a study made by Hamari et al. (2016) showed that immersion in the game has no significant effect on learning. Furthermore, the same study showed that the challenge and skills have a positive impact on being engaged and immersed in the game.
Fullagar, Knight, and Sovern (2013) found that challenge-skill dynamic has also influence on increasing motivation by extending players’ capacities. Prensky (2002) considers the motivation of gameplay as the REAL 21st century learning revolution. Motivation is related to cognitive engagement in learning as it helps in maintaining learner’s attention focused. This moves us to another base of game design that is ‘the theory of motivation’ defined as “an internal state that arouses us to action, pushes us in particular directions, and keeps us engaged in certain activities” (Ormrod, 1999, p. 407). Motivation is considered as an essential determinant and driver of student learning. The theory differentiates between two types of motivation, the intrinsic motivation where the source of motivation lies intern within the student and the mission and the extrinsic motivation where the source of motivation is external to the student and the mission. Researchers stressed that the intrinsic motivation is much powerful than the other type since intrinsically motivated students show more enthusiasm and creatively perform their tasks learning from their failures and looking for improvement (Ormrod, 1999). Challenge, fantasy, and curiosity are three of the major kinds of motivation synthesized by Piaget(1951) who states that the will drives players to mastery (challenge) to pursue optimally informative environments (curiosity) which is partly absorbed by the use of schemas from other contexts (fantasy). Groen (1978) criticises Piaget’s theory of being too ambiguous or extremely general. Basing on Piaget’s work, Malone (1987) introduced a framework for a theory of intrinsically motivating instruction diving into those three elements. He had also added collaboration and competition element which emerge only in games involving more than one person.
Published by: Fatma Alrifi (10.06.2020)
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