Examination of secondary school students' digital gaming motivations and computational thinking skills

This research aims to examine the development level of information processing skills of students who play digital games regularly and to reveal the relationship in this regard by using correlation analysis method. The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between digital game motivation and information processing thinking skills in middle school students by using analysis methods. In this context, it was investigated whether there is a significant difference in the development of information processing skills between children who play digital games for fun or to pass the time and children who do not play digital games. The sample group consists of 293 seventh grade students randomly selected from schools in Keçiören district of Ankara. Demographic, digital game motivation and information processing thinking skill scales were applied to this group. As a result of this thesis study, whether there is a significant difference in terms of digital game playing motivation and information processing thinking skills in terms of digital game type, game playing time and game environments was examined by ANOVA method and gender was examined by T-test method. Finally, whether there is a significant relationship between information processing thinking skills and digital game motivation was revealed by Pearson correlation analysis. As a result of our research, it was observed that there was no significant relationship between Computational Thinking Skills and Digital Game Motivation. This study is important in terms of understanding the effects of digital game types, game environments, game durations and gender on computational thinking skills and digital game motivation.