What is it about?
This study is intended to support the Danish elementary school history classes in teaching pupils about the Bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807. The study included 22 pupils from two classes. One class with 11 pupils was included in the experimental study, which used a serious game to communicate the learning objectives of the topic. One class with 11 pupils served as the control group and used a more traditional approach with readings from the history textbook. The evaluation was based on a knowledge test with learning objectives from the curriculum. Additionally, the gaming engagement was evaluated in the experimental group through a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The game design was focused on intuitiveness, clear goals, and narrative engagement; which was revealed in the findings with the highest score from the gaming-engagement questions. Further, the results revealed higher understanding of specific learning objectives in the experimental gaming group compared to the control group. Previous research has the same findings, but there is a lack of improved suggestions for how to make the perfect match between game content and learning, as well as a lack of improved methods when evaluating games with children or early teens.
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Why is it important?
History plays a vital role in schools all over the world. Through knowledge of countries’ histories, pupils can get an understanding of their ownand other societies. However, reading history is a skill with many graduations of proficiency; it involves lots of complexity, and it is not an easy task for pupils aged 13–14 to read the mandatory history literature. The Copenhagen Bombardment is considered a foundation of Danish history. However, the analogue text that forms part of the curriculum is not an easy read. This is partially due its complexity; there were several nations involved, several years and numbers are included, and it draws on old sources and writing styles with reports and eyewitness accounts from the bombardment. Therefore, the aim of this study was to improve pupils’ engagement and learning about the Copenhagen Bombardment in 1807 with a serious game
Perspectives
The interviews supported positive attitudes toward learning through a serious game as an alternative to traditional textbook readings. That serious games can be used as a supplement to traditional textbook readings is already well established in the literature [19, 20]. One of the main takeaways from this study is the importance of a teacher’s involvement and collaboration to fulfill specific learning objectives in a curriculum, thereby developing a successful serious game that engages pupils and teachers. These objectives need to be very clear from the beginning during the research design and game design processes. It is vital to know what the game is intended to achieve and, specifically, how it can supplement the analogue text reading.
Thomas Bjørner
Aalborg Universitet
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: How a Serious Game Supports Elementary School History Classes in Teaching About the Bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, January 2023, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_23.
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