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The effectiveness of adaptive versus non‐adaptive learning with digital educational games

DOI:10.1111/jcal.12416
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Stefanie Vanbecelaere at KU Leuven
Stefanie Vanbecelaere
Katrien Van den Berghe
Katrien Van den Berghe
Katrien Van den Berghe
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Frederik Cornillie at KU Leuven
Frederik Cornillie
Delphine Sasanguie at Hogeschool Gent
Delphine Sasanguie
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Abstract and Figures

For the training of academic skills, digital educational games with integrated adaptivity are promising. Adaptive games are considered superior to non‐adaptive games, because they constantly assess children's performance, and accordingly adapt the difficulty of the tasks corresponding to the children's individual level. However, empirical evidence with regard to the effectivity of adaptive compared to non‐adaptive games is limited. A study was conducted with 191 children from the third year of Kinder garten who were enrolled in one of three conditions, that is, playing an adaptive version of the reading game (RG), a non‐adaptive version of the RG or training with pen‐and‐paper exercises. In all three conditions, children trained emergent reading (phonological awareness and letter knowledge) once a week for 30 min over a period of 5 weeks. Children's performance on cognitive (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, reading fluency) and non‐cognitive (motivation, self‐concept) factors was assessed. Results revealed a significant improvement in phonological awareness and letter knowledge in all conditions. However, no differences between the conditions were observed with respect to children's improvement on phonological awareness and letter knowledge or on their post‐test scores for reading fluency. With regard to motivation and self‐concept, again, no differences in these non‐cognitive factors were observed across conditions.
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ARTICLE
The effectiveness of adaptive versus non-adaptive learning
with digital educational games
Stefanie Vanbecelaere
1,2
| Katrien Van den Berghe
2
| Frederik Cornillie
2
|
Delphine Sasanguie
3
| Bert Reynvoet
3
| Fien Depaepe
1,2
1
Faculty of Psychology and Educational
Sciences, Centre for Instructional Psychology
and Technology, KU Leuven, Belgium
2
ITEC, IMEC Research Group, KU Leuven,
Belgium
3
Faculty of Psychology and Educational
Sciences, Brain & Cognition, KU Leuven,
Belgium
Correspondence
Stefanie Vanbecelaere, Faculty of Psychology
and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven Kulak,
Etienne Sabbelaan 51, 8500 Kortrijk, Belgium.
Email: stefanie.vanbecelaere@kuleuven.be
Funding information
VLAIO Flanders Innovation &
Entrepreneurship
Peer Review
The peer review history for this article is
available at https://publons.com/publon/10.
1111/jcal.12416.
Abstract
For the training of academic skills, digital educational games with integrated adaptiv-
ity are promising. Adaptive games are considered superior to non-adaptive games,
because they constantly assess children's performance, and accordingly adapt the dif-
ficulty of the tasks corresponding to the children's individual level. However, empiri-
cal evidence with regard to the effectivity of adaptive compared to non-adaptive
games is limited. A study was conducted with 191 children from the third year of
Kinder garten who were enrolled in one of three conditions, that is, playing an adap-
tive version of the reading game (RG), a non-adaptive version of the RG or training
with pen-and-paper exercises. In all three conditions, children trained emergent read-
ing (phonological awareness and letter knowledge) once a week for 30 min over a
period of 5 weeks. Children's performance on cognitive (phonological awareness, let-
ter knowledge, reading fluency) and non-cognitive (motivation, self-concept) factors
was assessed. Results revealed a significant improvement in phonological awareness
and letter knowledge in all conditions. However, no differences between the condi-
tions were observed with respect to children's improvement on phonological aware-
ness and letter knowledge or on their post-test scores for reading fluency. With
regard to motivation and self-concept, again, no differences in these non-cognitive
factors were observed across conditions.
KEYWORDS
adaptive learning, digital game-based learning, emergent reading, intervention, preschool
1|THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 |Educational games to support learning
Very early in education, children need to learn important skills such
as reading and math. Persistent training of these academic skills is
required in order to prevent children from later learning difficulties
as it is proved that early reading and math skills are predictive for
children's future academic achievement (Melby-Lervåg, Lyster, &
Hulme, 2012; Sasanguie, Göbel, Moll, Smets, & Reynvoet, 2013).
One opportunity to establish practice in the classroom is the use of
digital educational games which are specifically designed to contrib-
ute to educational purposes (Jamshidifarsani, Garbaya, Lim,
Blazevic, & Ritchie, 2019; Szűcs & Myers, 2017). Specific character-
istics such as immediate feedback, meaningful and engaging con-
texts, interaction, modality and adaptive practice are promising
features in order to enable learning (Wouters & van Oostendorp,
2013). Because digital educational games are not only informative
but also entertaining, they are assumed to impact learners' cognitive
as well as non-cognitive learning outcomes (All, Nuñez Castellar, &
Van Looy, 2015; Wouters, van Nimwegen, van Oostendorp, & van
Der Spek, 2013).
Received: 23 July 2019 Revised: 30 October 2019 Accepted: 1 December 2019
DOI: 10.1111/jcal.12416
502 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd J Comput Assist Learn. 2020;36:502–513.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jcal
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... However, only a limited number of studies have examined the effects of difficulty adaptation on motivational outcomes (for a review, see Ninaus & Nebel, 2021;Liu et al., 2020;Sajjadi, Ewais, & De Troyer, 2022). Further, several studies have revealed that difficulty adaptation does not always have positive effects on motivational outcomes (Orvis, Horn, & Belanich, 2008;Sampayo-Vargas et al., 2013;Shute et al., 2021;Van Oostendorp et al., 2014;Vanbecelaere et al., 2020). The measured motivational outcomes of these studies included, for example, engagement (Orvis et al., 2008), training motivation (Van Oostendorp et al., 2014), and situational interest (Vanbecelaere et al., 2020). ...
... Further, several studies have revealed that difficulty adaptation does not always have positive effects on motivational outcomes (Orvis, Horn, & Belanich, 2008;Sampayo-Vargas et al., 2013;Shute et al., 2021;Van Oostendorp et al., 2014;Vanbecelaere et al., 2020). The measured motivational outcomes of these studies included, for example, engagement (Orvis et al., 2008), training motivation (Van Oostendorp et al., 2014), and situational interest (Vanbecelaere et al., 2020). The non-significant results of these interventions might be partly explained by rather small sample sizes (Orvis et al., 2008;Van Oostendorp et al., 2014) or the relatively short duration of the interventions (Sampayo-Vargas et al., 2013). ...
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