The Impact of Serious Game on the Nursing Students' Learning, Behavioral Engagement, and Motivation

Digital game-based learning is a ludic approach that has evolved through the development of information and communication technologies (ICT), making the learner an active participant in the virtual learning environment instead of a mere observer. It is an electronic simulation tool suitable for improving learning efficiency as well as learner engagement and motivation. The integration of this educational technology in the teaching and learning process can contribute to the construction of knowledge, the development of new skills and attitudes among students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of serious game on the learning, behavioral engagement, and motivation of nursing students. To do this, we first conducted a study with a sample of 58 polyvalent nursing students divided into two groups; one experimental and the other as a control. Both groups benefited from the same content taught at a distance, however, the experimental group benefited from an online serious game after the course. By comparing the summative scores of the two groups using the Student's t-test, the results show that the serious game improved the students' clinical knowledge of pediatric nursing (t= -2.706,p=0.009). However, it did not have an effect on clinical skills (t= -0.373, p=0.711). As a second step, we have studied the impact of the game on the learners' behavioral engagement based on the analysis of the digital traces of the students' work. Meanwhile, the motivation is analyzed using a questionnaire developed from the ARCS scale of Killer (2010), which is distributed to the experimental group. By comparing the means and deviation standards, the results show that the students give the satisfaction factor the highest score (4.71±0.34) followed by the relevance, attention, and confidence factors. To obtain reliable results, however, it is necessary to repeat the serious game experience in several nursing modules. In addition, the impact of combining serious game with simulation on the learning of nursing students should be studied.