In this study, two sections of a higher education Personal Finance course were examined. One section (Session A) had traditional short essay or problem solving homework assignments; the other section (Session B) had online games about finance as homework assignments. The students were assessed by a midterm exam and final exam, and the results were used to assess the effectiveness of including online games in the curriculum (Huang & Hsu, 2011). Although the research method was carefully reviewed to avoid fallacies, the only area of concern would be the decision to make the exams in a multiple-choice format. This format does not measure true knowledge; students who do not fully understand the material could choose correct answers by guessing. Perhaps including multiple test formats, such as short essay and fill-in-the-blank, as well as multiple-choice would provide a better indicator of which section benefitted more.
The results of the study indicated that having the online games as homework was more effective than having the traditional homework. That is, Session B scored significantly higher on the exams than Session A did (Huang & Hsu, 2011). Although the study provided great insight into the use of online games in the classroom, it is worrisome that the data might have been skewed due to a small sample size. The sample size of this study was only a total of 44 college students (Huang & Hsu, 2011). If this experiment were to be executed again, it would benefit the study more if the sample size were to be larger. This way, the results of the experiment would more closely reflect the true effectiveness of online games among the higher-education population.
The authors concluded the article by suggesting several ways online games could benefit certain groups in society. These groups include university students under financial aid and people in the IRS VITA program (Huang & Hsu, 2011). However, it is possible that online games about personal finance could benefit more groups than those previously mentioned. For example, since video games generally appeal to younger audiences, high school students would greatly benefit from using the online games in this study as a supplement to their Career Education classes. In this way, students would learn to avoid the pitfalls of financial illiteracy at an earlier age.
The article “Using Online Games To Teach Personal Finance Concepts” was truly a great insight to the effectiveness of implementing online games in the higher education classroom. The method used to conduct the study was reasonably sound, but the results might have been more substantial if more than one test format was implemented. The results of the experiment showed online games as homework in a more appealing light, but a larger sample would have gotten results that were more representative of the population. Finally, high school students would benefit from online games as much as (if not more than) university students. Despite these criticisms, this article gives a good indication that using online games as a supplement to classroom instruction would greatly benefit students. Along with additional research, this article could help teachers discover the benefits of adding computer games to their curriculum.
Works Cited
Huang, C., & Hsu, C. (2011). Using online games to teach personal finance concepts. American Journal Of Business Education, 4(12), 33-38
