Learning can’t be fun, can it?

Inspired by research by Carrie Heeter et al. and the MIT Games-to-Teach project, we set up a small-scale empirical study on two educational games on Art aimed at primary school children. We found that both boys and girls liked to play these games; that one game scored better on our “fun index” and that girls had less mouse skills and lacked certain game skills. This did not, however, affect their test score, on the contrary, the girls improved more than the boys. To our amazement, we also found that the girls especially anticipated to have learned less from the more entertaining game, which might suggest that even at this early age they think that learning cannot be fun.