A methodological framework for the cognitive-behavioural evaluation of educational e-games

Angeliki Antoniou, Dimitris Diakakis, George Lepouras and Costas Vassilakis
To appear in the International Journal of Learning Technology

Abstract
The proposed methodological framework reviews and uses knowledge from the field of cognitive psychology in order to evaluate aspects of educational games. In particular, we concentrate on two components of human cognition that play a central role to learning, namely memory and motivation. After having reviewed theories in the field, we created a questionnaire in order to evaluate educational games. The questionnaire incorporates different experimental findings of cognitive psychology. Especially, we have applied Maslow’s motivation theory, Behavioural findings on reinforcement, experimental findings about attention and memory. We present the results obtained from the evaluation of two games, PAC-MAN and Mega Jump. The results confirmed the user ratings of the two games, showing that there seem to be cognitive reasons for the success/failure of different games. Finally, lists of guidelines for developers and instructors are included.

Note: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.