The effect of the computer game developed for the 7th grade science lesson, on student’s self-efficacy toward science

Abstract

Human being starts learning about life via games. Therefore games have always maintained their importance and have always been interesting since the beginning of the human life. Games are being moved from streets to virtual platforms today as information Technologies are considerably progressing. And because of that, computer games are one of the entertainments for people today, especially for the children of school age. Analysing the literature, we find the computer games to have many positive effects on children’s performance at school. In this research, the effect of the computer game developed for the 7th grade science lesson, on student’s selfefficacy toward science is studied. Quasi-experimental design is used as the quantitative research method. The study group consists of 444 7th grade students in total attending to 7 different schools chosen from 7 different regions in Turkey. In this context, while there has not been any interference to the students attending to one of the 7th grade classrooms chosen from each school, the other students are provided with the computer game which is developed in the context of the application as an additional exercise. Seven experimental groups and seven control groups were chosen from each region in total one of which is the control group and the other is experimental group. “Science Self- Efficacy Scale” was drawn on as the data collection tool. The scale was applied two times in total, the first of which was before the application and the second after the application. As the result of the study, the developed computer game is determined to be an effective material in increasing the students’ self-efficacy toward Science. In addition, It is concluded that there are regional differences regarding the students’ self efficacy. © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.