Integrating console games into educational settings has been increasingly both applauded and criticized. The vast interest in game playing of people of all ages appears to be a motivating source for educators and trainers to find ways to effectively integrate serious games into their educational settings in order to inspire their own students towards the content they are providing in their classrooms. In the past few years, the surge in the interest in using mobile devices in the classroom has followed a similar track to that of console games, perhaps because their constructs appear to mirror those found in those console-based games. These similarities go beyond the coincidental fact that many of the most popular mobile apps also happen to follow game-like patterns. For this reason, the authors suggest that the need exists to examine the educational validity of the instructional apps that are being downloaded onto mobile devices using the same rationale that was previously extended in earlier studies. Using this premise, the researchers based their hypothesis that mobile apps can offer a unique and facile means to “gamify” a classroom. Based on a review of the current state of affairs in commercial off-the-shelf (OTS) apps, there may be too many on the market that profess to be “educational” when, in fact, they do little to actually support acquiring content knowledge. The authors suggest that this possible overabundance has contributed to the need to create a means for game designers to properly and accurately evaluate in a formative way what contributions their games would potentially make to education and training. The current study focuses both evaluating the value of using RETAIN for app designers to formatively assess their potential constructs and to inform educators as to which apps best meet the instructional and student learning needs once those apps enter the market.

中文翻译：

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教师对移动应用程序教学效果的评估：一个形成性案例研究

将控制台游戏集成到教育环境中越来越受到赞扬和批评。各个年龄段的人们对游戏玩法的极大兴趣似乎是激励教育者和培训者寻找有效方法将严肃的游戏融入他们的教育环境中的动力，以激发他们自己的学生学习他们在课堂上提供的内容。在过去的几年中，在教室中使用移动设备的兴​​趣激增与游戏机游戏的发展趋势相似，这也许是因为它们的构造似乎反映了那些基于游戏机的游戏中的构造。这些相似之处超出了偶然的事实，即许多最流行的移动应用程序也恰好遵循类似游戏的模式。为此原因，作者建议，有必要使用以前在早期研究中扩展的原理来检查正在下载到移动设备上的教学应用程序的教学有效性。在此前提下，研究人员基于他们的假设，即移动应用程序可以提供一种独特而便捷的方式来“教室化”教室。根据对商用现货（OTS）应用程序当前状况的评论，市场上可能有太多被认为是“教育性”的东西，而实际上它们却很少能真正支持获取内容知识。作者认为，这种可能的过剩促使人们需要创造一种方法，使游戏设计师能够以形成性的方式正确，准确地评估他们的游戏对教育和培训的潜在贡献。