Educational Gaming and Situational Interest for Higher Education Students

Abstract

InPraktijk is an educational game developed for first year physical therapy students. The game aims to use playful learning to optimize students' interest in interacting with course content. This project is a first step in achieving a versatile educational game platform optimized for engaging, playful learning that can be applied across multiple educational programmes. The project seeks to improve students’ motivation to engage with course materials outside of class time and explore the relationship between playful learning and situational interest. Our research is focused on a deeper understanding of the relationship between situational interest and playful learning. The InPraktijk game, developed in collaboration with Game Tailors, will be used as a tool to test this relationship. Through the game, we will collect quantitative data on time played, drop out location and situational interest using the situational interest scale. This work in progress paper covers the design for study 1 of the InPraktijk project. The study indicates whether the gamified interaction with course content can generate more situational interest compared to traditional content delivery methods. The results will provide insights into the effectiveness of the InPraktijk app in stimulating situational interest. Our findings will guide the direction of follow-up studies on further game optimization and the integration of playful games in educational structures.