Student opinions on the use of educational digital games in religious culture and ethics course

Educational digital games, which have become an important part of modern education, redefine the learning experience of students and enrich their teaching processes. In this study, the lack of use of educational digital games in religious teaching has been mentioned; An educational digital game design example was presented to address this shortcoming, and student views on this material were obtained. A material prepared for the use of secondary school 6th grade students, designed in parallel with the course curriculum, which can be played with groups of friends and developed for mobile devices, is presented. In this direction, it is aimed to contribute to the field by presenting a material sample in order to partially eliminate the deficiencies in the use of technology in the field of religious education. The developed educational digital game was applied to 6th grade students studying at Amasya Hattat Hamdullah Imam Hatip Secondary School for four weeks, and at the end of the fourth week, a semi-structured interview was conducted with the students and their opinions were taken. In the study, the case study method from qualitative research was used. A semi-structured interview form was created to collect the research data. The study group consists of fifteen 6th grade students in Amasya Hattat Hamdullah Imam Hatip Secondary School. Purposive sampling was preferred in determining the study group. In the analysis of the data obtained from the research, descriptive analysis was preferred. Within the scope of the research, the opinions of 15 students who used the application were examined. It was found that the students found the educational digital game "Hicret" as educational, instructive, useful and productive in general. In particular, there are codes that the application helps students to be successful in their lessons, they can spend their free time in a fun and productive way, accelerate their learning, provide a better understanding of the subjects and allow them to repeat the lessons. In addition, it is suggested that similar applications can be used in different courses. This study consists of introduction, 3 chapters and conclusion. In the introduction part, the problem situation of the research, the purpose and importance of the research, the assumptions and limitations of the study are given. In the first part, the conceptual framework of the study was created. Information about educational digital games was given, and then other studies related to the field were included. In the second part, information about the method of the research, the content of the application and the design-development process are given. Finally, in the third part, the findings obtained from the students' thoughts and comments on the developed application are included. In the conclusion part, the data obtained from the study were summarized and various results were presented and solution proposals for the research problem were tried to be presented. The last, the data of the research and the data of the previous studies were compared.