Interactive mobile games development for children to learn about money

Abstract

Money notes and coins are used for transactions and are essential in daily human life. Children need to be exposed to enough knowledge about the purposes of money notes, and the most important is to identify the money correctly. Children begin to expose to identifying the money at school in standard one. However, depending on formal education is not enough because the children easily get bored, and they did not fully engage with formal education. The use of mobile games for learning purposes is becoming increasingly popular because they are interactive and able to attract students. Therefore, this research aims to develop mobile games to identify and learn about money. Three main phases have been carried out, and the first phase is preliminary research on the learning approach for children and data collection in money Malaysia Ringgit. The second phase is to design and develop mobile games. Three mini-games have been proposed, and the first game is to identify the money notes and coins. The second game is to learn about counting the money and coins, and the third game is to learn to use the money for purchasing purposes. After these three mini-games have been developed in the second phase, the third phase is the evaluation phase. The usability result shows the users agree the mobile games help them to identify money, calculate the value of money, and to perform basic purchasing activities. Based on the user acceptance results show that the mobile game works more effectively with adult or parental guidance. Overall, this research has successfully produced a mobile game that can help the children to learn to identify, count, and use money.