Monday, June 01, 2009

Faculty members in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Watson School of Education will host a pizza party at 11 a.m. Tuesday, June 2 for students at DC Virgo Middle School. Among four New Hanover County middle schools involved in a research study looking at the effects of educational video games on student mathematical achievement, DC Virgo students earned the overall highest average score for playing the educational games.

DC Virgo student Joshua Rogers earned the overall highest individual score, for which he will receive a Nintendo Vs. game console. Rogers accumulated 2,676,407 points in just over 15 hours of game play. Students were offered the pizza party and game console incentives as a way to keep them interested in playing the games so that the researchers could accumulate data needed to measure the games’ effectiveness.

Albert Ritzhaupt and Heidi Higgins, both assistant professors, and Beth Allred, technology coordinator/lecturer, made up the UNCW research team. They used Tabula Digita’s DimensionM standards base educational game on a sample of 497 students from four middle schools. Ritzhaupt projects that the team will have a report on its research findings completed by the end of June.

WHO:              UNCW education faculty and DC Virgo Middle School students

WHAT:            A pizza party celebration  

WHERE:         DC Virgo Middle School, 813 Nixon Street

WHEN:            11 a.m., Tuesday, June 2

Media contacts:
Stephanie Celenza, student intern, 704.996.1774 or smc7892@uncw.edu

Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.962.7259 or fischettid@uncw.edu

Albert Ritzhaupt, 910.962.7259 or ritzhaupta@uncw.edu