Pedagogical Change in Mathematics Learning: Harnessing the Power of Digital Game-Based Learning

Technological applications, especially the use of multimedia courseware have become more common in today's education, stimulating innovative approaches in teaching and learning. With the growing interest of integrating information and communication technologies (ICTs) into learning and teaching, the use of multimedia technology and digital games offered an alternate method of instruction. Multimedia objects play an important role in the classroom setting because of its ability to provide a virtual environment for learners to effectively acquire knowledge. This paper presents part of the findings of a research project that focused on the advantages of multimedia technology and the benefits of digital game-based learning. By using sample lessons from an interactive multimedia courseware called "DigiGEMs," this paper emphasizes the use of digital games as a vital tool in mathematics learning. The study sets out to examine if a positive attitude exists among young learners towards the learning of mathematical concepts. The DigiGEMs is targeted at primary school children aged between 7 to 9 years old, who can practice mathematical thinking skills in an appealing manner. This paper also describes the efficacy of using multimedia and game-based approaches to motivate mathematical learnings among Primary 1 to 3 students. The research findings corroborate with the hypothesis that digital game-based learning is more effective than traditional classbased learning in acquiring mathematical knowledge. It is hoped that the discussion in this paper will encourage other researchers to not only conduct further studies on children's learnings in the context of digital game-based learning environment in mathematics, but also to adopt game based-learning for other subjects such as science and languages in which the above elements (i.e., multimedia objects and digital games) are cohesively and dynamically integrated to optimise the teaching and learning processes.