Intellectual Production #2: Digital Games & Learning: Reviews of Research

Checa, D., & Bustillo, A. (2020). A review of immersive virtual reality serious games to

enhance learning and training. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 79(9-10),

5501-5527. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08348-9

The authors completed a survey analysis of the differences between VR-SG (Virtual

Reality Serious Games) classified as training vs education, to identify and evaluate existing

studies that contained a performance evaluation, and to make recommendations for further

research. This breadth makes it difficult to identify answers to research questions within the

analysis. The authors completed a four step process to identify relevant articles for analysis that

included database, technical publications and conference proceeding searches, snowballing

using references from initially found publications, filtering based on abstracts, and finally filtering

based on full text.

Education articles focused on knowledge acquisition, used cheaper hardware with

slightly more passive experiences, published more at conferences, had students as the main

audience, and evaluated learners through questionnaires. Training articles focused on skill

acquisition, used more expensive hardware and slightly more exploratory experiences,

published more in journals, had professionals as the main audience and used recorded data to

evaluate learners more often. Overall these comparisons had limited value for determining best

practice learnings to bring from one to the other and medicine was well established in both

indicating they could be combined. The hardware analysis by specific device is likely out of date

while the trend remains as training continues to afford more complex hardware like replica

cranes.
 Most articles used unity 3D for creation of software (easier to implement) and interactive

experiences were most common to balance cost and immersiveness. As more of the general

public is exposed to VR due to its decreasing costs, the authors’ recommendation for an

“extensive pre-training stage” will become less essential. User satisfaction was high with VR-SG

and used as an explanation for increased learning, but this conclusion was not tested and

generally studies lacked a rigorous control group or large sample size (both options for further

research).

Powers, F. E., & Moore, R. L. (2021). When failure is an option: A scoping review of

failure states in game-based learning. Techtrends, 65(4), 615-625.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00606-8

The authors completed a scoping review to determine the current state of research on

failure in game-based learning rather than a meta-analysis or systematic review as they lacked

a clear research question or a large amount of similar studies on a topic. They used Arksey and

O’Malley’s (2005) six step review framework and found 14 articles related to the topic using the

PRISMA guidelines in the article selection step. Following a standardized method will minimize

evidence selection bias and lend credibility to findings.

The authors discuss failure as a mechanic where having students fail is part of the

learning experience and units of failure (game resources impacted by success or failure) such

as health, tokens, points, or even course grades. Failure as a mechanic to improve student

retention seems similar to the emotional impact students would have playing games with hidden

intents such as Train.

They determined that if the penalty for failure is too low it will encourage random

guessing and if the penalty is too high (tied to real life grades) it will demotivate students and

discourage protective failure. When I encounter modules at work that have unlimited attempts, I
will often just randomly guess without reading the material to speed along the test and often

have poor recall of the information later so this confirms my experiences.

That risk perception is individual and anonymity decreases risk perception are findings

that can be correlated with studies in areas outside of game-based learning such as public

health, media studies and business. Riskier experiences that incorporate failure increased

learner retention and based on this article finding, we can extrapolate that well designed virtual

reality games can safely increase the perception of risk to enhance learning retention as

Barsom et al. (2020) inadvertently did with a simulated CPR situation.

References

Powers, F. E., & Moore, R. L. (2021). When failure is an option: A scoping review of failure

states in game-based learning. Techtrends, 65(4), 615-625.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00606-8

Barsom, E. Z., Duijm, R. D., Dusseljee-Peute, L. W. P., Landman-van der Boom, E. B., van

Lieshout, E. J., Jaspers, M. W., & Schijven, M. P. (2020). Cardiopulmonary resuscitation

training for high school students using an immersive 360-degree virtual reality

environment. British Journal of Educational Technology, 51(6), 2050-2062.

https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13025