Contribution: This article presents the design of in-game tools to support learning within an educational video game and investigates the impact of tool usage on engineering students’ performance in an introductory digital circuit design course. Background: Despite the level of appeal of video games to college students, there is a lack of empirical evidence of how to design effective games to address educational goals. One component of games that can serve as a support mechanism to help players be successful in the game is the in-game tools. This article investigates the impact of three types of instructional in-game tools on engineering students’ performance on digital circuit design tasks. Research Questions: To what extent do different types of in-game tools (content-specific instructional guidance tool, scaffold, and productivity tool) contribute to players’ performance on digital circuit design tasks? Methodology: This article presents the design of an educational video game to teach digital circuits design. It presents three discrete types of in-game tools and investigates their impact on students’ learning performance. For this investigation, multiple regression analysis was used to show the relations between the tools and learning performance ( ${N}=176$ ). Findings: The results show the player use of tools that provide content-specific instructional guidance and scaffolding for troubleshooting is correlated with their learning performance. The productivity tool did not significantly contribute to the learning performance of the students.

中文翻译：

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通过3-D视频游戏进行数字电路设计教学：使用游戏内工具对学生表现的影响

贡献： 本文介绍了在教育视频游戏中支持学习的游戏中工具的设计，并在数字电路设计入门课程中研究了工具使用对工程专业学生表现的影响。 背景：尽管电子游戏对大学生的吸引力很高，但缺乏有关如何设计有效的游戏来实现教育目标的经验证据。游戏中的工具之一，可以用作帮助玩家在游戏中取得成功的一种支持机制。本文研究了三种教学型游戏工具对工程专业学生在数字电路设计任务中的表现的影响。研究问题： 不同类型的游戏内工具（针对特定内容的指导工具，脚手架和生产力工具）在多大程度上有助于玩家在数字电路设计任务中的表现？ 方法：本文介绍了一种教育性视频游戏的设计，以教授数字电路设计。它介绍了三种离散的游戏工具，并研究了它们对学生学习成绩的影响。在这项调查中，使用了多元回归分析来显示工具与学习成绩之间的关系（ $ {N} = 176 $ ）。 发现：结果表明，玩家使用的工具可提供针对特定内容的指导，而用于故障排除的支架与他们的学习表现相关。生产力工具对学生的学习成绩没有显着贡献。