Homemade PowerPoint Games
in a High School Science Setting
Jason Siko
Michael Barbour
Sacip Toker
Wayne State University

Homemade PowerPoint Game
 Student-generated game using MS
PowerPoint
 Can be self-contained within .ppt file or have
a printable game board and pieces
Template can be found at: http://it.coe.uga.edu/wwild/pptgames/

Story ORE BURST
Game Directions
Game Preparation
Game Pieces
Play the game
A Homemade PowerPoint
Objectives Game
By
Credits
Clarkston high school
Copyright Notice

Game Preparation
 Game board: Print out slides 37-38, cut off the
edges, then tape together
 Game Pieces: Print out slide 5
 Need Dice
Home Page

Justifications for use
 Constructionism
 Learning by building
 Creation of meaningful artifact
 Microtheme narratives
 Concise narratives focus thoughts and ideas
 Question-writing
 Process of writing questions, determining answer, &
creating plausible alternatives forces students to analyze
and synthesize content
 With practice, students write higher-order questions

ORE BURST!
HURRY!!!! Be the first to get you and your equipment to the
mining spot before your competitors. You and your workers
are competing with three other mining companies. You have
just heard that in the state of Nebraska they have come
across a large amount of ore. They are letting anyone come
and retrieve it from the ground for a cheap price and the
quantity is unlimited. You want to be the first group to get to
Nebraska to claim where you are going to dig and retrieve
your share of the ore. Along the way you are traveling you will
encounter some tough times where you are stopped and
possibly sent back home. So don’t wait and get the move on!
Home Page

Time to play Ore Burst!
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25
Home Page Game Directions

If zinc’s atomic number is 30 and it has
31 neutrons how many protons does it
have?
31 61 30

Prior Research
 Parker (2004)
 Middle school grammar – showed pre/post gains, but not
as much as control
 Barbour et al. (2007)
 U.S. History – NSD
 Clesson, Adams, & Barbour (2007)
 British Literature – NSD
 Barbour et al. (2009)
 Analysis of questions from Barbor et al (2007) study
 ~93% of questions “Knowledge”-level

Methodology
In this study we set out to answer the following research questions:
 Do students reviewing for a chemistry test by generating
homemade PowerPoint games perform better on multiple-
choice tests than students who use a traditional worksheet
review guide?
 Do students who have used this technique more than once
perform better than those who have never constructed
homemade PowerPoint games or have only constructed
games once?
For these two research questions, we developed the following
hypotheses:
 Ho: No difference in student performance
 H1: A positive difference in student performance

Methodology
 Two 50-question unit tests
 t-test between control and treatment groups
 ANOVA to compare performance of students
who made games for both units, one unit, or
not at all

Setting
 Large Midwestern suburban high school
 Environmental Chemistry course (ACS
ChemCom curriculum)
 Trimester system
 3 Teachers

Setting
Table 1
Distribution of Control and Treatment Groups Among Teachers A-C
Unit 1 Unit 2
Trimester Control Treatment Control Treatment
1st A – 2 sections
(n = 37)
B – 2 sections
(n = 44)
C – 1 section
(n = 20)
2nd A – 3 sections B – 2 sections
(n = 62) (n = 37)
3rd B – 2 sections A – 4 sections
(n = 32) (n = 69)

Results
 Do students reviewing for a chemistry test
by generating homemade PowerPoint
games perform better on multiple-choice
tests than students who use a traditional
worksheet review guide?

Results
 First Unit Test: (t = 3.069, p = 0.87)

Results
 Second Unit Test: (t = -2.114, p < 0.05)

Results
 Do students who have used this technique
more than once perform better than those
who have never constructed homemade
PowerPoint games or have only constructed
games once?

Results
 Results of ANOVA (F = 2.286, p = 0.106)

Discussion
 First statistically significant result with
homemade PowerPoint games
 Largest sample size to date
 More higher-order questions (based on
observation only; research ongoing)

Implications
 For practitioners:
 More time than traditional review
 Boundaries on file size, narratives
 Spend more time on questions; less in lab
 Further research:
 Continued analysis of questions
 Does review = constructionism?
 Project grade vs. Test grade