Exploring the effectiveness and moderators of game learning on creativity enhancement: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Creativity has been proven to be a core competitiveness in the twenty-first century. Although many experimental studies have confirmed that game learning can improve creativity, some studies have contrary results. Currently, there are very few, and primarily incomplete, meta-analyses integrating experimental studies of educational gaming’s impact on creativity. The current meta-analysis included 29 articles from 2002 to 2022, containing 116 effect sizes and 4,159 student subjects. The results showed that the overall mean weighted effect size was 0.84, indicating that game learning significantly positively affected students’ creativity compared with non-game learning. In addition, the mean effect size was moderated by digital content, teaching strategies, educational stages, publication sources, and class size but not by patterns, disciplines, and experiment duration. Accordingly, this study provides new insights and suggestions on improving creativity via game learning design and implementation as a reference for researchers, teachers, game designers, and developers in the field of creativity.

Keywords

• game learning
• gamification
• game-based learning
• digital game-based learning
• creativity
• meta-analysis