Effects of the Implementation of a Video Game Curriculum on Attendance and Student Perceptions of Their Engagement

Abstract

It is widely documented that engagement in the school community and attendanceare critical factors in academic success for students. It is also widely documented thatover the past decade gaming has exponentially increased in popularity around the world.These two facts have led some educators to wonder if incorporating gaming into theeducational environment might increase engagement and attendance rates amongstudents. This study was performed to examine how offering a structured gaming courseto high school students would affect the perceptions of their engagement in school andhow offering gaming in school would affect attendance rates as compared to non-gamingpeers.Two research questions were used in this mixed-methods study. The firstquestion was qualitative and focused on student interviews regarding students’perceptions of how enrollment in the gaming course would affect their engagement inhigh school. The second research question was quantitative and addressed howenrollment in the gaming course might affect attendance rates. The quantitative questionhad two hypotheses designed for statistical testing.The results of the qualitative portion of the study did show increased engagementamong all students enrolled in the curriculum. Levels of engagement and how thestudents were engaged varied, but several themes did emerge. Quantitative results fortwo school years did demonstrate a statistically significant higher attendance rate amongthose students enrolled in the course, compared to their peers.