Fun with bananas
Emily Sun, Sarah Han · 2013
Educators are often finding ways to increase intrinsic motivation for students, one of which is making a task more enjoyable. We hypothesized that using a novel input device would increase enjoyment and performance for a task. In order to test our hypothesis, participants played a game with a keyboard, large pads (created from aluminum foil and cardboard), and bananas as input devices by using a Makey Makey. Our results indicate that enjoyment, interest, excitement, and enthusiasm with bananas was higher than with a standard keyboard input despite a worse performance and lower preference ranking. We discuss potential implications and future work around the implementation of novel input devices.