| Summary: | 碩士 === 佛光大學 === 學習與數位科技學系 === 101 === The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of embedding fantasy and a pedagogical agent in a simulation game on students' learning of the area of parallelograms. Seventy-two fifth graders from a public school in Yilan county participated in the experiment that used two-by-two factorial designs. The participants were put in blocks of four based on their math ability and randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups. The dependent variables of the experiment were fantasy (i.e., yes or no) and pedagogical agent (i.e., yes or no) while the independent variables were posttest as well as cognitive load and motivation.
The results of the study were as follows:
1. Embedding fantasy and a pedagogical agent or not in a simulation game would not affect students' posttest scores.
2. Embedding fantasy and a pedagogical agent or not in a simulation game would not affect students' cognitive load and motivation in all five dimensions.
3. Four significant differences were found when comparing students' cognitive load and motivation in the learning (i.e., simulation) and challenge (i.e., game) stages. In other words, students were more willing to participate in the learning than the challenge activity. They also felt more confident in understanding the content contained in the learning than the challenge activity. Students, however, felt that the challenge activity was significantly more difficult and they needed to put in more effort into the challenge than the learning activity.
Recommendations regarding ways to improve the design of the study and to embed fantasy and pedagogical agents in simulation games were given. Future research directions were also proposed.
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