Understanding learning within a commercial video game: A case study
This provides incremental support for using video games in education, addressing educators and researchers interested in alternative learning methods.
The study tackled the problem of whether children can learn from commercial video games, finding that they acquired basic construction skills from playing World of Goo, with eye-tracking data supporting learning in two games.
There has been an increasing interest in the debate on the value and relevance using video games for learning. Some of the interest stems from frustration with current educational methods. However, some of this interest also stems from the observations of large numbers of children that play video games. This paper finds that children can learn basic construction skills from playing a video game called World of Goo. The study also employed novel eye-tracking technology to measure endogenous eye blinks and eye gaze fixations. Measures of both these indicators of cognitive processing further suggested that children in the study learned to play the two video games, World of Goo and Bad Piggies. Overall, the results of the study provide further support of the potential for children to learn by playing commercial video games.