Trade-off or complement? An exploratory study on students’ game behavior and learning behavior in a math spatial educational game

The combination of playing and learning is a pivotal feature but also a key challenge in educational games. To investigate whether playing and learning are trade-off or complementary activities, this study explores students' distinction and transition between game behavior and learning behavior in a math spatial educational game for cube nets learning. A total of 402 fourth graders used the educational game over a 3-week period, with one lesson per week. Behavior log data, questionnaire data, and interview data were collected. The results show that the students could distinguish between game behavior and learning behavior mainly based on the related content of the behavior and their perceptions of the behavior characteristics. Two kinds of transition between game behavior and learning behavior were identified, namely the explicit large-scale cross transition and the implicit small-scale tight transition, which suggest a complementary relationship between playing and learning in educational games. Furthermore, compared with the students with lower learning outcomes, the students with higher learning outcomes were more likely to induce behavior patterns involving virtuous circles between playing and learning. The findings of this study have implications for effective educational game design going forward, in which playing and learning are appropriately combined.