A Preliminary Study of Context Integration as A Determinant in The Effectiveness of Digital Mathematics Games

Contexts in the digital learning environment are one of the crucial components regarding students’ motivation and positive attitude development toward content. Although there is not enough guiding information in the literature about how contexts should be, previous research has shown that even digital game contexts are effective in developing students’ environmental awareness. To reveal the impact of contexts in the digital learning environment, it is necessary to consider the variables regarding the socio-economic and cultural status of the students. Therefore, it can be envisaged that the effect of digital game contexts may differ depending on students’ experiences and social environments. For this purpose, digital games were designed in two different contexts in this research. In these digital games, two opposite contexts were selected. The first context was focused on saving nature and green energy. This context includes different levels of digital games on topics such as solar energy, reforestation, and clean water sources. The second context was focused on unregulated industrial development that negatively affects nature by ignoring it. This context includes different levels of digital games such as building thermal power plants, building chemical factories, and turning forests into fields. Apart from the contexts, the other variables in both games (i.e., gameplay, artistic structure, levels of problem parameters) are the same. At each game level, students were asked to solve mathematical problems regarding ratio-proportion. In this study, the preliminary findings, which were derived from a large experimental study, were presented. The participants of this study were 15 gifted eighth-grade students from Turkey. Among the participants, eight students played the digital game regarding the context of green energy, and the remaining seven students played the digital game regarding the context of unregulated industrial development. Preliminary findings showed that students were more interested in the digital game regarding the context of unregulated industrial development as it included interesting and beneficial topics such as energy generation and economic development. The resident perception of the citizens regarding the acute need for energy generation and economic development rather than saving nature and green energy since Turkey represents a developing country may explain this finding.