Desarrollo Intelectual, Motriz de los niños/as

The second research question asks whether there was a significant difference between how well the two feedback types, CF and DGF, helped participants acquire the target vocabulary. A comparison of the pretest and posttest results for these two feedback types in SU13 and SP14 is shown in Table 4.3 below. Two-tailed t-tests for equality of means were conducted in order to determine whether there was a statistically significant

difference between these two groups in either semester. The results indicated that there was statistically no difference between the average score changes from the pretest to the posttest for these two groups in SU13 (p = 0.2) or in SP14 (p = 0.6).

Table 4.3: Pretest and posttest score averages per feedback type

Pretest Posttest Change

Summer 2013 CF 55.8% 81.8% 26%

Summer 2013 DGF 47.73% 83.07% 35.34%

Spring 2014 CF 50.69% 72.22% 21.53%

Spring 2014 DGF 53.53% 78.11% 24.57%

This result confirms the hypothesis that there would be no difference between the effectiveness of the two different approaches to feedback. As proposed earlier, this result may be due to the fact that both the classroom and the digital game approaches to feedback are based on research and theory within their respective fields. To confirm this finding I again looked at the posttest scores for only those items that were missed in the pretest for any given participant and then either present or absent in their treatment phase. These results can be seen in Table 4.4 below.

Table 4.4: Average posttest scores for each group for items missed in the pretest according to their presence in the treatment

Posttest if not in Treatment Posttest if in Treatment Difference Summer 2013 CF 25% (4) 82.5% (20) 57.5% Summer 2013 DGF 25% (8) 90.9% (11) 65.9% Spring 2014 CF 44.44% (9) 79.16% (24) 34.72% Spring 2014 DGF 70.83% (12) 88.88% (9) 18.05%

As the results in Table 4.4 illustrate, for each group in each semester, the performance on the posttest was better when the item was present in the treatment as opposed to when the item was not present during the treatment for that particular player. Unfortunately, once again there were too few tokens to allow for reliable statistical measures to be performed on these numbers.

The above results confirm that MuCo helped each group of participants regardless of the type of feedback that they received or the semester in which they participated. However, they fail to confirm any difference in how effective the different feedback types were. Nevertheless, there are two other factors that should be kept in mind when looking at these results. First, given that the participants in this study self-selected themselves, future research should be conducted in which participation is not self- selected. It is possible that the type of students who would not self-select themselves for participation in this study would benefit more notably from one type of feedback more than those who did self-select themselves. Second, we note that in both semesters, the DGF groups improved more than their corresponding CF groups. Thus, it is possible that a pattern actually does exist and that it is simply not emerging as statistically significant due to the small number of participants. Future research should use larger numbers of participants in order to answer this question more concretely.

Since there was no difference in the actual pretest and posttest results according to feedback type, another test was conducted to see whether there was any significant difference. For this second test, the average amount of time it took each participant to answer each pretest and posttest question was averaged and compared for each different group. First, outliers were identified and removed from each group’s pretest and posttest times by calculating the z-score. The times for each group were then averaged. The results from this comparison can be seen in Table 4.5 below. The purpose of this test was

to determine whether one group improved more than the other in how quickly they selected their answers in the pretest and posttest. Two-tailed t-tests for equality of means were run for each semester in order to determine whether there was a difference. The result was again negative for both SU13 (p = 0.88) and SP14 (p = 0.22).

Table 4.5: Average reaction time in seconds during the pretest and posttest per semester and feedback type

Pretest t Posttest t Delta t

SU13 CF 10.38 5.86 -4.52

SU13 DGF 10.31 5.92 -4.39

SP14 CF 10.38 6.70 -3.68

SP14 DGF 10.71 8.14 -2.57

There is no statistically significant difference in the change in the average amount of time that participants used to select pretest and posttest items. This result suggests that neither feedback type helped the members of either group become more confident in their own knowledge of the tested vocabulary. This finding again confirms the hypothesis that there would be no statistically significant difference between the effectiveness of the two different feedback types. As discussed in section 2.6, the basis for this hypothesis was that both forms of feedback had been developed for their respective components, educational and entertainment, of serious games and therefore their effectiveness would be similar. The evidence thus far suggests that this is indeed the case. Both types of feedback are, statistically, equally effective at helping the participants acquire the target vocabulary.