Promoting Students’ Math Learning Performance and Engagement: A Help-seeking Mechanism-based Mobile Gaming Approach

Abstract

Mobile game-based learning systems are generally expected to be interactive, connectable, and recordable. Researchers have indicated that it is important to promote interaction between peers during mobile learning activities in class. In this study, an interactive mobile math game with a help-seeking mechanism is proposed to improve elementary school students’ learning achievements, learning motivation and social interactions. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted in an elementary school mathematics course. A total of 59 third graders from two classes participated in the experiment. One class with 30 students was assigned to the experimental group learning with the interactive mobile math game with the help-seeking mechanism, while the other class with 29 students was assigned to the control group learning with the conventional mobile gaming approach. Based on the empirical results, it was found that the proposed approach effectively promoted the students’ learning achievement and learning motivation. A follow-up analysis of the experimental results further showed that the proposed approach benefited the students with low mathematics self-efficacy more than those with high self-efficacy, indicating the potential of the approach for helping students with low self-efficacy improve their mathematics ability.