Design and evaluation of physical interactive games for taiwanese local dialect in elementary school teaching

Physical interactive games have been increasingly utilized to enhance learning. This paper aims to explore an innovative teaching with the aid of physical interactive games for local dialect curriculums in elementary school. Two games were designed for grade 3 students to learn basic characters and phonics of Taiwanese local dialect. The first game was designed with the story of a little girl visiting Taiwan town, i.e., Gukeng, focusing on listening lyrics and connecting the characters with the phonics. The second game was designed with a little boy watering coffee bean, emphasizing on recognizing characters and their respective phonics. The evaluation on the design and process of the games was used to code and analyze qualitative data from two focus groups with 6 students per group, two experts, and the instructor´s observation. Aspects categorized for evaluation are Fantasy, Rule/ Goal, Sensory Stimuli, Challenge, Mystery and Control. Some positive advantages were discovered. Also, the evaluation on learning motivation was conducted through quantitative analysis based on Kelly´s ARCS questionnaires. 31 students (14male, 17female) were analyzed. The average of the two games is 4.2 and 3.94 respectively, indicating learning motivation are consistently high. The result of this paper could act as an initial investigation for researchers interested in supporting local dialect instruction using physical interactive games.