Flow and Self-Efficacy in Serious Games

Although the performance of female students in STEM subjects is as good as that of male students, their self-efficacy expectations are at a low level. Given the influence of self-efficacy expectations on academic careers and later career decisions, measures are needed in this area. Serious games could be one way of increasing the self-efficacy expectations of adolescents and girls in particular. The property of serious games to enable flow experiences is said to have a positive effect on motivation and possibly also a positive influence on self-efficacy expectations. In order to investigate this, a serious game on the topic of electricity theory was developed and the flow experience and the influence on self-efficacy expectations were examined in a pre-post design. The results indicate a positive effect, which is partly mediated by the flow. Read