6/100 Digital Games, Design, and Learning: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Clark, D. B., Tanner-Smith, E. E., & Killingsworth, S. S. (2016). Digital games, design, and learning a systematic review and meta-analysis. Review of educational research, 0034654315582065.

Very interesting

Some notes

One results is that the aggregate measure of contextualization in the study has been reported as having a significant negative relationship with learning gains...

It seems this finding is conflict situating learning in context. My interpretation is it depends on what are the learning outcomes, higher order thinking skills or simple fact, math operation. However, the authors listed four possible reasons:

1. "...rich narratives and visual complexity distract students from the intended learning content or provide alternative goals within the game...."
2. "Almost all the studies analyzed in this report involved immediate posttests focusing on lower order learning outcomes."
3. "...our own coding rules may not have captured the critical relationships between narratives and learning in terms of time for telling about lower order learning objectives. Specifically, we coded the relevance of narratives in terms of relevance to the learning mechanic rather than assessment content."
4. "We coded narrative in terms of relevance and thickness, but perhaps the critical features of narratives are whether they are engaging, high-quality, or accessible, regardless of thickness or relevance." 

Their coding system

• General Study Characteristics 
• Play duration
• Additional instruction
• Player configuration: 
• Game Mechanics Characteristics
• Sophistication of Mechanics: points/badges; more than points/badges
• variety of player actions
• small: tetris
• medium: zoombinis
• large: Quest Atlantis
• Intrinsic Integration (learning mechanics/game mechanics)
• Simplistically intrinsic
• intrinsic
• not fully intrinsic 
• scaffolding
• Low : success/failure/points
• less low: display answers after an error
• less high: beyond two above
• high: teacher
• Visual and Narrative Game Characteristics (Contextualization)
• Visual realism
• schematic
• cartoon-2D
• realistic-3D
• Anthropomorphism
• low 
• medium
• high
• Perspective
• Third person
• over the shoulder/overhead tracking
• First person
• Story relevance
• none
• irrelevant
• relevant 
• Story depth 
• thin: only setting, scenery, context
• medium: some evolving story
• thick: rich evolving story
• Research Characteristics in Value-added and Media Comparisons
• comparison condition quality
• condition reporting (game)
• method reporting (inappropriate statistical analysis/omissions in reporting)
• assessment overalignment
• assessment type
• study design

This coding scheme can be used to guide the writing of the method part of my study.

The reason they create "Contextualization" is because they found variables under visual and narrative are correlated.