Learners’ Cognitive Load When Using Educational Technology

Games, with features such as voluntariness, fantasy, specific rules/goals, artificial gains/payoffs, competition or cooperation, sensory and motor involvement, challenge, control, low costs of trial and error, and associated amusement (Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002), might have existed as a type of leisure activity as early as the dawn of civilization, when adults had sufficient food and children were not habitually starving (Dempsey, Haynes, Lucassen, & Casey, 2002). Games not only can be used for recreation but also for educational/training purposes. For instance, in ancient China, individuals learned to play games like Weiqi, or “Go” as it is known in Western countries, to practice various moves in order to become commanders or military strategists. In the modern world, serious, game-based computer systems are widely used for military training as well as for classroom learning (Raybourn, 2007). Currently, learners have an exponentially increasing quantity and variety of educational games available to them (Dipietro, Ferdig, Boyer, & Black, 2007). abStract