Enhancing Student Affect From Multi-Classroom Simulation Games via Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

Educational simulations often require players to maintain a high degree of engagement for play in the simulation to continue. Student motivation and engagement is tied to affective factors, such as interest and self-efficacy. As such, game designs and teachers who implement them should promote student interest and self-efficacy in play. In this study, a responsive online professional development (ROPD) program was provided to teachers as they implemented a multi-classroom socio-scientific simulation game for middle school social studies classrooms called GlobalEd 2. A series of ANOVAs revealed that student affect toward the game and its content, including student interest and self-efficacy, was highest when their teachers likewise had a high degree of participation in the ROPD program. This evidence demonstrates the importance that ongoing implementation supports can have in classroom-based simulations and serious games and the benefits of ROPD in furthering the impact of simulation games.