Effects of Collaborative Digital Gameplay on Students' Three Dimensions of Engagement in Mathematics

Introduction

In primary education, digital games have been discussed and used as supplemental tools to support learning and teaching in the classroom (Callaghan et al., 2018; Kangas et al., 2016). According to Yang and colleagues (2018), educational digital gameplay combines digital games and educational resources. Other studies highlight that digital gameplay helps trigger students’ interest and motivation in learning (Rodríguez-Aflecht et al., 2018; Sun et al., 2018), develops their problem-solving skills (Yang et al., 2018) and has a positive effect on their learning outcomes (Sun et al., 2021a). Hence, digital gameplay has been employed in different educational settings, such as reading (Vanbecelaere et al., 2020), mathematics (Callaghan et al., 2018), science (Fokides & Chachlaki, 2019) and foreign languages (Yang et al., 2018).

This study attempts to provide an in-depth understanding of the influence of collaborative digital gameplay on students’ behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement in mathematics. A face-to-face classroom setting is designed to explore the effects of collaborative digital gameplay on students’ engagement in mathematics. Unlike previous studies, which focused on overall engagement (Cornelisz & van Klaveren, 2018), this study considers the three-dimensional engagement because these three dimensions supplement one another and have varying impacts on students’ learning activities. Further theoretical and empirical studies are crucial to identify the differences and interactions of the three dimensions of engagement (Fredricks & McColskey, 2012) and examine how classroom factors affect the three dimensions simultaneously (Fredricks et al., 2004). Moreover, engagement is conceptualized as a multifaceted construct. Defining and measuring each dimension can separate antecedents and outcomes of behaviour, emotion and cognition for designing future studies on three-dimensional engagement and digital game-based learning in the educational context (Lam et al., 2012). In short, compared with the studies that focus on overall engagement, this study provides a comprehensive perspective on three-dimensional engagement in primary education. As this study shows, digital gameplay can be identified as an important factor supporting students’ learning in mathematics – that is, digital gameplay and other factors appear to influence students’ three-dimensional engagement in the mathematics classroom.