Designing serious games to enhance political efficacy and critical thinking disposition for college students: The case of Taiwan

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to develop a serious game which integrated interactive narratives, entertainment-education and argument reconstruction and further, to examine its effects on enhancing political efficacy and critical thinking dispositions for college students in Taiwan. The employed elements for entertainment-education were emotions, empathy, examples, self-efficacy, enhancement, quality, correctness, completeness, consistency, how compelling it is, clarity, cultural appropriateness and accountability. Sixty-two college students all over Taiwan participated in this study and were asked to play the game. The analytical results of Repeated Measure Analysis of Variance and content analysis suggest that the serious game is an effective tool for improving college students` critical thinking disposition toward the issue. However, political efficacy was not significantly enhanced. According to the interviewees who scores badly on the gaming performance, source credibility and interpersonal influence should be considered for future design. © 2011 IEEE.