COMPARISON OF THE REINFORCEMENT EFFECTS OF DIGITALLY BASED GAMES AND STRATEGY GAMES ON REFLECTION AND TRANSLATION SKILLS IN TRANSFORMATION GEOMETRY: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Abstract

This study aims to comparatively examine the effects of a digital educational game and a traditional strategy game (Battleship) on academic achievement, retention of learning, and student perceptions in 8th-grade transformation geometry, and to address the literature gap regarding the relative effectiveness of different game types in mathematics education. Using a quasi-experimental design with pre-test-post-test control groups, the study involved 63 eighth-grade students from a public middle school, with data collected through a "Transformation Geometry Achievement Test" and an "Unstructured Opinion Form" developed by the researchers. Quantitative findings revealed that while both experimental groups showed significant achievement gains compared to the control group, the Battleship group demonstrated superior performance to the Digital Game group in both achievement gain (p=.012 vs. p=.028) and effect size (d=0.86 vs. d=0.72). Qualitative findings supported these results, indicating that students found the Battleship game more enjoyable (85% vs. 73%) and more contributory to learning (90% vs. 67%) than the digital game. In conclusion, strategy-focused traditional games offering physical manipulation and social interaction appear to serve as more effective cognitive scaffolds for concretizing abstract mathematical concepts than digital games, suggesting the value of incorporating such approaches into mathematics education curricula.