Learning With Board Games: Interplay of Context and Students' Prior Knowledge

Board games can support engagement, deep information processing and learning outcomes for university students. The instructional context, notably the way an activity is introduced to students, can influence students' behavior and learning outcomes. Yet, despite its potential important influence on in-game behavior and learning, the impact of the instructional context used to introduce a game-based learning activity has not received much attention. In two studies, we examined how framing a game-based learning activity with a serious or a non-serious context can impact university students' behavior and learning outcomes. In the first study, 44 graduate students played the same word association game that was either introduced as a game or as a study activity. Results showed that the serious context increased recall as compared to the gaming context. In the second study, involving 87 participants playing the same game, results showed that the gaming context and prior gaming experience also reduced students' recall. Overall, grouped analysis showed that the gaming context led to poorer learning than the serious context for recognition and recall measures, even when considering prior knowledge, in-game behavior, and prior gaming experience. Theoretical and practical implications for educators are discussed. Framing a game-based learning activity as a game fosters shallow information processing and prior knowledge retrieval, which reduces recognition (grouped analyses) and recall outcomes (study 1, 2 and grouped analyses) as compared to framing the GBL activity as an exercise.The influence of the context used to frame a GBL activity depends on prior gaming experience: having prior gaming experience further pushes students' attention on the playing aspects of the game, at the expense of the learning objectives.In-game behavior had only a minor effect: it affected only recognition outcomes.Findings fuel theories showing that students' understanding of the context can influence what they think they should do in a learning activity.Educators should keep in mind that framing a GBL activity as a game can reduce learning outcome, affect students' goal, and in-game decisions.