Students habits and digital game preferences among young children in Malaysia: a case of designing an educational game

Abstract

In a developed country like Malaysia, prominent technological devices that are use by most people are the computer, the tablet, and the digital mobile hand phone. However, for full implementation of such devices in teaching and learning in primary and secondary schools are still distant when compared to higher education which at their best, fully utilises the computer and other digital devices in the classroom. This has created a gap between these two groups of educational levels. Primary school students prefer digital device usage to fulfil their leisure time either at home or outside. However, their utilisation orientates towards entertainment rather than for educational purposes. Correspondingly, game design is one issue relevant to their preferences. Thus, the discussion on the preferences for game design is based on sampled findings, where the study has taken place in three Islamic Religious Primary Schools (KAFA) involving 287 students, from age 10 to 12 years old. The presentation of this paper will begin with a brief explanation on the application of educational games in the learning process and the problems that arise. The next section is the elaboration on the methodology used, which includes interview sessions, purposive sampling and triangulation design. The results from the investigation will be further elaborated in the descriptive analysis. At the end of this paper, an outline of the input for the initial study stage towards the next phase of Participatory Design (PD) process is frameworked.