Document Type : Original Research Paper
Authors
Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Background and Objectives: One of the fundamental difficulties in educational systems has been the academic decline of students in basic subjects such as mathematics. Various factors, such as the low level of self-directed skills of students, affect their mathematical progress. Becoming independent is one of the goals of self-directed learning and the necessity of the math classroom. Most of the time, students are dependent on the teacher in math lessons and are unwilling to solve challenging problems. Cultivating independent learners who can be curious, creative and able to lead their learning is one of the main goals of any educational system. Self-directed learning can increase self-confidence, independence, learning capacity to remember material over a long period of time, and students' ability to transfer concepts and develop lifelong learning skills in themselves. Active teaching methods can be used to improve students' self-directed learning level. One of the active teaching methods is gamification teaching. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of gamification teaching on the mathematical self-directed learning of the tenth-grade technical and professional students.
Methods: The current research was conducted using semi-experimental method with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of the research included female students of the 10th grade of Varamin studying at technical and vocational high school, and the sample included 194 students (96 people in the experimental group and 98 people in the control group) who were selected by convenience sampling. During eight sessions, the students of the experimental group were taught some of the challenging math concepts with the help of gamification, and in the control group, the conventional and traditional method was used to teach the same math concepts. The research instrument was a mathematical self-directed questionnaire that included 15 items that measured the components of learning motivation, planning and implementation, self-monitoring and interpersonal communication. Cronbach's alpha of the math self-directed questionnaire was 0.892 and Cronbach's alpha was obtained for the components of learning motivation, planning and implementation, self-monitoring and interpersonal communication, as 0.846, 0.787, 0.735 and 0.704 respectively. For data analysis, descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution tables, mean, standard deviation and inferential statistics such as multivariate covariance analysis were used.
Findings: The results of the multivariate covariance analysis test showed that teaching by gamification in the experimental group, except for the learning motivation component (F=2.648, Sig=0.105) on other components of students' mathematical self-directed including planning and implementation (9.524) =F, Sig=0.002), self-monitoring (F=10.248, Sig=0.002) and interpersonal communication (F=5.598, Sig=0.019) had a significant effect so that the average scores the experimental group were significantly higher than those of the control group, and also the mean of learning motivation component increased in the experimental group, but the difference was not significant.
Conclusion: The results of the data analysis showed that teaching by gamification has an effect on promoting the independence and responsibility of students' learning in mathematics and on the three components of self-directed learning in mathematics. In other words, teaching by gamification had a positive effect on students' self-directed learning by creating a feeling of need to learn and accepting their role and responsibility in it. The research results showed that teaching by using games had a positive effect on their mathematical performance by increasing the level of interactive learning and creating independence in students. Teachers, authors of textbooks, planners and educational experts can benefit from the results of this research to improve and modify educational methods.
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© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
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