دانلود رایگان مقاله بازی های جدی برای آموزش شغلی افراد دارای عقب افتادگی ذهنی

Abstract

Serious games use strategies that are often applied in special education such as repetition, immediate feedback, and context-based teaching and learning. Serious games are known to increase performance on the target task and related self-efficacy, using a more cost effective method in a safer environment than traditional training (Michael & Chen, 2006). The main goal of our study was to investigate whether playing serious games can affect hands-on performance of persons with developmental disabilities. For the present study, 47 persons with developmental disabilities were divided into three groups including a control. The two experimental groups performed two hands-on tests in different orders: apple packaging and hydroponics (AH, HA). For the first round of tests, the AH group played the Apple Packaging serious game while the HA group played the Hydroponics game. For the second round of hands-on tests, the AH group played the Hydroponics game, while the HA group played the Apple Packaging game. The control group did not play any games between the hand-on tests. Finally, all three groups performed a third round of hands-on tests. The results show that gameplay of the target task increased speed and accuracy of the target hands-on task performance. The main results of this study show that serious games can be used for training simple job skills in persons with developmental disabilities. Serious games can be implemented as part of an ongoing programme to reduce training time and enhance accuracy in a safe and enjoyable environment.

4. Discussion

The goal of this study was to investigate whether participants with developmental disabilities would benefit from playing a job-training serious game. To measure effectiveness, we tested whether playing two separate mini games of two individual tasks (apple packaging and hydroponics) affected hands-on task performance in terms of speed and accuracy. The results indicate that playing the matching game affected the target task performance speed. Such effects were witnessed in both apple packaging and hydroponics tasks. However, for performance accuracy, playing the matching game strongly affected the hydroponics task only; while the apple packaging task was not significantly affected. We suggest several possibilities why the Apple Packaging game yielded little effect on performance accuracy, while the effects of the Hydroponics game were strong. The discrepancy may have been due to the different levels of difficulty of the two tasks. In the national job curriculum for special schools, apple packaging is included in Chapter 2 Section 1, while hydroponics is included in Chapter 3 Section 4 (Korean Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, 2010). The schoolcentred vocational curriculum tends to be hierarchical, with easier tasks that require basic skills appearing earlier in the curriculum and the more difficult tasks that require advanced skills appearing later in the curriculum (Korea National Institute of Special Education, 2005). Based on the asserted difficulty of the two tasks, one interpretation of the results may be that games are more effective for difficult tasks than for easy tasks when trying to achieve high accuracy. The second possibility is the ceiling effect, although this could be regarded a continuum of the first effect. We suspect that there was a ceiling effect for the apple packaging but not for the hydroponics task. Evidence that supports our speculation was found in the distribution of accuracy data at initial testing (Test Wave1). Accuracy scores with the highest frequency (48.9%) for apple packaging consisted of the total available points (14), which resulted in a J-shaped distribution, while for hydroponics, the highest frequency (53.2%) was at a lower score (12.9), which resulted in a bell-shaped distribution. Ceiling effects compromise statistical effects of the experimental data that ‘may lead to the mistaken conclusion that the independent variable has no effect’ (Cramer & Howitt, 2004, p. 21).