Wednesday, March 19
1:45 PM-2:45 PM
EDT
River Terrace 3

Middle School Students and Fractions in WhyPower: Gaming, Repetition and Learning Outcomes

Roundtable ID: 40786
  1. aaa
    Cliff Zintgraff
    University of North Texas

Abstract: In the WhyPower project, hosted in the virtual world Whyville, middle school students analyzed nine weeks of Whyville’s virtual power usage history. These activities exercised proportional thinking. Later, 939 students with varying degrees of experience in WhyPower completed a survey. The survey included three proportional reasoning questions. Analysis indicated that students aged 12-14 who played WhyPower answered more questions correctly, at statistical significance and with small to moderate effect size. Analysis indicated less significant differences with older students. High game repetition was negatively associated with correct proportional reasoning answers. The author speculates that repetitive play represented attempts to conquer challenging material. Results suggest that age-appropriate content in real-world context can quickly bring selected students to new levels of understanding.

No presider for this session.

Topics

Conference attendees are able to comment on papers, view the full text and slides, and attend live presentations. If you are an attendee, please login to get full access.
x