Television, Games, and Mathematics: Effects of Children's Interactions with Multiple Media

Sandra Crespo, Vince Melfi, Shalom Fisch, Richard Lesh and Elizabeth Motoki

NOTE: This paper was selected by the program committee as a Meaningful Play 2010 Top Paper. It has been submitted to the Meaningful Play 2010 Special Issue of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS). Due to the copyright requirements of the journal, only the abstract is available in the conference proceedings.

Abstract

Past research has shown that educational media, such as a television series or interactive games, can promote significant learning. Today, however, it is quite common for producers to create several interconnected media, such as a television show and an associated web site, under the assumption that multiple platforms elicit greater learning than a single medium would. The research reported below used Cyberchase media as the setting in which to investigate the effectiveness of multiple media as a tool for mathematical learning for elementary school children. The study included both a naturalistic phase, which mirrored children's typical use of the media, and an experimental phase, which allows for causal inference to be drawn about their learning outcomes.