Effects of non-digital games integrated with digital games for advancing fifth graders’ spatial reasoning abilities

Game-based learning, which includes non-digital and digital games, highlights the benefits of games in terms of players’ learning and engagement. Whereas contemporary research focuses more on digital than non-digital game-based learning, more studies shall compare the effects between the two types of game-based learning and their integration. This study adopts a design research approach to designing and evaluating a board game and the board game integrated with its digital game for developing spatial reasoning abilities. The games were designed with the enactivist perspective on learning. A total of 94 fifth graders participated in four different experimental groups. It was found that the four experimental groups significantly enhanced their spatial reasoning abilities. The two groups of the digital game prior to the board game and prior to as well as posterior to the board game reported significantly more engagement than the other two groups. The results suggest that the board game integrated with the digital game as a warm-up activity is mostly conducive to enhancing spatial reasoning abilities and to facilitating more engagement.