Motivations for Playing Computer Games at Tertiary Education Level: A Comparison of Further Education and Higher Education Computing Students

Over the past forty years computer games have played an increasingly important part in the way that university and college students spend their leisure time and have gradually replaced traditional leisure activities. It is therefore very important to understand learner motivations for playing computer games and playing computer games in tertiary education contexts as the field of games-based learning has a dearth of empirical evidence supporting the validity of the approach. It seems an obvious assumption that computing students would tend to play computer games quite significantly. This study will examine the motivations of computing students for playing computer games and playing computer games in an educational context at tertiary education level. The study will look at computing students in Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) and will perform a comparison to assess if these motivations are similar or dissimilar based on Malone and Lepper's 1987 framework or intrinsic motivation. The study will contribute a comparison of the same kind of student at different levels of tertiary education and different levels of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF).