CNR-ITD

The 6th International Conference GALA 2017 has taken place between December the 5th and the 7th 2017, in Lisbon (Portugal) https://conf.seriousgamessociety.org/. It is the annual conference of the "Games and Learning Alliance”, focused on the use of Serious Games. ITD-CNR won the “Best Paper Award” with the paper “Training of Spatial Abilities with Digital Games: Impact on Mathematics Performance of Primary School Students” (L.Freina, R.Bottino, L.Ferlinio, M.Tavella).

The paper presents the results from the “A me gli occhi” project, organized in cooperation with the “scuola primaria Cantore” in Genoa (Italy). The project aimed at supporting the development and consolidation of visuospatial abilities in students of the last two years of primary school, with the hypothesis that such a training would have a positive impact on their performance in mathematics. Twenty game based training sessions have been organized, once a week, along the whole school year. Two classes participated as the experimental group, and another two equivalent classes have been involved as a control group. Students’ mathematical abilities have been measured at the beginning of the project and at the end using a standardized math test. Results show some improvements in the experimental group compared to the control one, confirming the initial hypothesis.

Link to the publication: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71940-5_3