The Students’ Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations to Engage with Digital Learning Games

Abstract

A relevant literature review suggests that today’s children are increasingly immersing themselves in ubiquitous technologies, including interactive media and digital games. Therefore, this research uses valid measures to investigate the primary school students’ motivations toward playing educational games, at home and at school. The study was carried out amongst year-3 students in a small European state. The findings reported that there were strong correlations between the students’ perceived usefulness of the educational games and their behavioral intention to use them for their learning. The results also indicated that there was no significant relationship between the perceived ease of game-play and the children’s enjoyment in engaging with the school’s digital games. To the best of our knowledge, there is no other study in academia that has explored the children’s technology acceptance, normative pressures and their intrinsic motivations to use digital learning games in the context of primary education. Therefore, this contribution opens future research avenues, as this study can be replicated in other contexts.

Keywords: technology acceptance model, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, normative pressures, behavioral intention, educational games

JEL Classification: I2, I20, I21, O3, O30, O31, O32, O33