News Finding: "Mixed-reality games that support physical observation in the real world have a great potential to enhance learning and enjoyment for young children," the researchers say.
Paper Finding: This suggests that having a character in the game made it more engaging and memorable for children.
News Context: They also determined that simple physical controls like shaking the tablet or pushing the earthquake button did little to improve either learning or enjoyment of the game. "Mixed-reality games that support physical observation in the real world have a great potential to enhance learning and enjoyment for young children," the researchers say. They plan to extend their mixed-reality game to different content areas to create a new educational system that bridges the advantages of physical and virtual worlds to improve children's science learning, understanding and enjoyment in a collaborative way.
Paper Context: In addition, children mentioned that they liked the gorilla character in the game, telling their friends about their gorilla friend. This suggests that having a character in the game made it more engaging and memorable for children. Our experimental results provide evidence that observing physical phenomena in the context of an interactive mixedreality game plays an important role for learning and enjoyment, while adding simple physical controls such as having the kids shake the tablet in a screen-only game or press the physical switch in a mixed-reality game does not have an effect on learning or enjoyment.