A Digital Game Based Learning Environment to Teach Accounting for Young Children

Abstract

Today most of the children spend significant amount of their time on computer games. To make use of that time for learning activities the educators can be tactful by introducing educational video games to children. Having features like competition, engagement, and immediate rewards games make learning fun and motivates students to learn. They make tasks fast, active and exploratory while traditional school-based system will not be able to give the same level of performance. By creating a digital game based learning environment it is expected to make boring and difficult subject areas more interesting, easy to memorize and fun. Not only that, it will enable learners to undertake tasks and experience situations which would otherwise be impossible and/or undesirable for cost, time, logistical and safety reasons while developing new knowledge and skills. The solution is aimed to implement in government schools of Sri Lanka and in other private educational institutions if they are interested. It was decided to create a simple Two Dimensional(2D) learning game to teach Accounting subject to young learners using Flash technology. Since, Sri Lanka is a developing country and our national schools do not have sophisticated expensive computer systems the game should develop so as to run in personal computers having only very basic hardware and software capabilities. System will be developed according to the Object Oriented techniques and methodologies. Unified Modeling Language was used in the analysis and design stages of the project. Adobe Flash CS3 Professional with Action Script 3.0 and XML is used to implement the game. The dissertation illustrates all the work carried out during each phase of the project. Each chapter will consist of required details in order to understand the project with the help of appropriate tables, graphics and reports. Through achieving functional and non-functional objectives of the project, this system gives a smooth functioning game with user friendly environment. The developed software is thoroughly tested to guarantee a validated system. It is strongly believed that the educational game which was developed will greatly contribute to the well-being of Sri Lankan society.