Abstract
Edutainment technologies offer new and fascinating options in sport and health. In this chapter, the impact of edutainment in the fields of sport and health is reviewed. Two edutainment technologies are focused on: educational TV as a more or less receptive technology and serious games as a more activating and interactive approach, i.e., digital games serving a double mission to establish a “serious” goal (like learning and training) without compromising fun and motivation.
In the field of sport edutainment, predominantly off-the-shelf games are used for improving skills, abilities, and knowledge. Educational TV plays a minor role. Research shows evidence that games can improve sport-related skills, abilities, and knowledge on a low and elementary level. Currently, no evidence is available that sport edutainment can improve high- or top-level outcomes.
In the field of health, educational TV and serious games are both used. Existing evidence confirms weak to strong effects on health-related knowledge, attitude, and behavior.
In general, the review shows the great potential of TV and serious games in the fields of sport and health. On the other hand, there are still numerous open questions concerning sustainability of the results, appropriate settings, personalization, individualization, and social context. Future system developments and interventions should be more based on sound theory. Furthermore, the quality of research methods and designs needs to be improved favoring randomized controlled trials. Future directions like integration of social media and cross-platform edutainment are discussed.
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Wiemeyer, J., Tremper, L.L. (2017). Edutainment in Sport and Health. In: Nakatsu, R., Rauterberg, M., Ciancarini, P. (eds) Handbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-50-4_67
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