Results on Taiwanese Students

Question 1: What are the game playing habits of Taiwanese students?

A total of 100 Taiwanese students consisting of 47 male students and 53 female students participated in the survey. The mean age of the respondents is 20.03. There were 23 freshmen, 35 sophomores, 27 juniors and 15 seniors participating in the survey.

In response to the question “Do you play computer games?”, 66 students claimed that they play computer game and 34 students answered “No”. Regarding the gender of the gamer group, there were 42 male players and 24 female players. The opinion upon the multi-player platform and single-multi-player platform is equally distributed among Taiwanese gamers with each half of the group expressed their support to each platform. The average game playing time of Taiwanese gamers is 6.74 hours per week which is lower than the amount of time spent by Vietnamese students (8.17 hours per week). Among the non-gamer group, there were only 5 male students claimed they do not play computer games while there were 29 female students said that they are not gamers. The collected results once again support the opinion that male students tend to spend more time playing computer games than their female counterpart.

Question 2: What are the motivations to play computer game of Taiwanese students?

Chart 6: Gaming motivations of Taiwanese students

Chart 6 illustrates the ranking of factors motivating Taiwanese gamers to play games.

Six highest ranking motivation factors are relaxation (mean = 3.69), pleasure (mean = 3.62), fill leisure time (mean = 3.54), feeling good (mean = 3.51), release tension (mean = 3.5) and exciting (mean = 3.48). The three least important motivation factors ranked by Taiwanese respondents are control, recognition and fantasy. From these results, it can be said that the Taiwanese gamers share similar viewpoint upon the game motivation with Vietnamese gamers as relaxation and pleasure are two highest ranking important factors by both Taiwanese and Vietnamese students (see chart 1). However, while Vietnamese gamers consider computer games as a way to socialize with people, the cooperation factor was not among the top ranking motivation factors to play computer game (mean = 3.22). Another notable difference between two groups is the gender difference in ranking motivation factors.

While Vietnamese male respondents generally displayed higher motivation results than female respondents, the case is in contrary for Taiwanese participants when Taiwanese female gamers give higher scores than their male counterpart in 10 factors. No significant difference was found between two genders regarding their motivation to play computer games.

In response to question “What stimulates to you keep playing a game when the difficulty is increasing?”, Taiwanese students shared similar viewpoint with Vietnamese students as their opinion also generally fell into three categories: (1) challenging themselves;

(2) satisfying curiosity and (3) having leisure. Below are some of their comments:

- “I want the feeling of victory when the difficulty is increasing”

- “I’m curious to see how far I can go”

- “It is exciting”

Question 3: What are the reasons for using computer games in a Higher Education environment of Taiwanese students?

All 100 Taiwanese students were asked to rank the importance of 10 different reasons for using computer game in higher education environment. The five highest reasons are cooperation (mean = 3.53), fill leisure time (mean = 3.47), relaxation (mean = 3.47), pleasure (mean = 3.45) and challenge (mean = 3.33).

Chart 7: Reasons for using computer games in a higher education environment of Taiwanese students split by gaming experience

As the gamers take a large part of the total number of respondents (66 out of 100 respondents), it is not strange to see that relaxation, filling leisure time and pleasure are still

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among the above reasons. However, it should be noted that cooperation and challenge are now in the top five reasons with cooperation ranked as the most important reason ranked by participants. Thus, it can be said that when computer games are used for the purpose of studying, Taiwanese students expect not only a fun and relaxed approach for studying but also a tool to improve cooperation among students and challenge themselves. This

expectation from Taiwanese students is quite similar to Vietnamese students as the latter group also rate relaxation, pleasure and cooperation among the top reasons to use computer games in the higher education environment. Besides, the factor competition ranked by Vietnamese students may also indicate that Vietnamese students also expect that they can challenge themselves through competition against other participants in the game. When Taiwanese participants were split into gamer and non-gamer group, the gamer group gave higher score than the non-gamer group in 9 out 10 reasons to use computer game for the education purpose. Using One-way ANOVA analysis, significant differences between two groups were found at 5 reasons including recognition, curiosity stimulation, filling leisure time, pleasure and relaxation. The result of the analysis was shown in Table 3:

Table 3: Significant differences in reasons for using in a higher education environment between Taiwanese gamers and non-gamers

ANOVA

When the respondents are split by gender, no significant difference was found

between two gender groups. Besides, the result shows that female students even gave slightly higher score to 6 reasons than male students (see Chart 8).

Chart 8: Reasons for using computer games in a higher education environment of Taiwanese students split by gender

When asked for their opinion upon using computer games in the higher education environment, 65 Taiwanese students expressed their support to the idea while 35 students showed disbelief in the application of computer games in higher education. In both cases, Taiwanese students also displayed similar opinions with Vietnamese students. The reasons given by students who supported or against the use of computer game in the higher education environment can be grouped into similar categories mentioned in the analysis of Vietnamese students. For students who supported the ideas, below are some of their comments:

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- “Computer games make our brain excited so educational game should have the same effect”

- “Students will be more motivated to study”

- “It strengthen the analysis ability, reaction to different situations and it helps us learn how to cooperate with other people as a team”

For those who do not support the idea, some of their opinions are listed as following:

- “Playing game costs too much time. So it is not effective”

- “Playing game will drive students’ attention toward playing instead of studying their courses”

- “Games are created for commercial and entertainment purposes, so if used as a tool for education, it might not be very useful”

When Taiwanese students were asked to give names of computer games they used for studying purpose at school, they also did not list any educational game they had ever

experienced. Therefore, it can be said that Taiwanese students in I-Shou University have not participated in any class using game-based learning approach.

Question 4: What are the attitudes toward playing computer games of Taiwanese students?

When being asked to give their ranking on 10 different statements concerning the attitude toward playing computer games, four highest ranked attitudes given by Taiwanese students are enjoyable (mean = 3.69), time consuming (mean = 3.67), interesting (mean = 3.66) and exciting (mean = 3.61). The means of these four attitudes are shown in Chart 9.

Chart 9: General attitude toward playing computer games of Taiwanese students split by gaming experience

Based on these results, it can be said that Taiwanese students generally hold a positive view toward computer games when the positive statements received highest score while the negative statements such as “Playing game is a waste of time” or “Playing game is a lonely activity” were given lowest score. However, there is one notable difference in the attitude toward games between Vietnamese and Taiwanese students. While Vietnamese students consider computer games not only an enjoyable and interesting activity but also a useful way to socialize and develop skills, Taiwanese students care more about the joy and excitement of playing game rather than using it as a tool to develop skills or interact with other players. At the first glance, the result of the attitude ranking seems contradictory when cooperation factor is previously rated as the most important reason for using game in higher education

environment, but it should be noted that at this part, Taiwanese students were asked to express their attitudes toward playing games in general, not for the educational purpose only.

Thus, the result of attitude seems consistent with the previous finding on the motivation of playing games of Taiwanese students where factors such as relaxation, feeling good or pleasure were ranked highest. When the respondents were split into gamer group and non-gamer group, there were significant differences found at 7 factors. The result of all factors calculated using One-way ANOVA analysis was shown in Table 4.

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Table 4: Significant differences in attitude toward playing computer games between Taiwanese gamers and non-gamers

ANOVA

Furthermore, the gamer group always gave higher score to all positive items while giving lower score to negative statements compared to non-gamer group. When the bivariate correlation analysis was run to find the correlation between the amount of playing time and their attitude toward playing computer games, the correlation was found at 5 items including

“Playing games help to develop skills” , “Playing games is interesting”, “ Playing games is a worthwhile activity”, “Playing games is enjoyable” and “Playing games is a valuable

activity” (See Appendix E). As all of these 5 items indicating positive attitudes, it can be said that the more Taiwanese gamer play computer games, the more positive they feel toward game playing.

Chart 10: General attitude toward playing computer games of Taiwanese students split by gender

When the respondents were divided by gender, the only one significant difference observed is at the statement “Playing game is a valuable activity” ( F[1,98] = 4.57, p ≤ 0.05).

In other items, although male respondents express slightly more positive attitude than female students, but the gap is not large enough to make a significant difference.

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In response to the question “What types of skills do you think can be obtained from computer games that would be relevant to Higher Education?”. The top 3 skills ranked highest by Taiwanese students are collaboration/teamwork, analyzing/classifying and problem solving.