Computers & Education 159 (2020) 103998 Available online 3 September 2020 0360-1315/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Effects of a formative assessment-based contextual gaming approach on students’ digital citizenship behaviours, learning motivations, and perceptions Preeyada Tapingkae a , Patcharin Panjaburee a, * , Gwo-Jen Hwang b , Niwat Srisawasdi c a Institute for Innovative Learning, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand b Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan c Faculty of Education, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Game Improving classroom teaching Secondary education Teaching/learning strategies ABSTRACT Several previous studies have indicated that secondary school students face problems in digital situations. Digital citizenship is therefore an essential conception for fostering students’ correct behaviour and safe daily life habits while using computer and communication technologies. However, scholars have indicated the challenges of promoting students’ digital citizenship owing to the lack of opportunities to situate them in decision-making situations. The advancement of computer and multimedia technologies has encouraged an increasing number of studies on digital game-based learning, which provides students with opportunities to experience various situa- tions, and to cope with problems encountered in daily life. Several previous studies have indi- cated that digital game-based learning environments with proper learning strategies might help students realize the importance and meaning of digital citizenship. To address this issue, this study proposes a formative assessment-based contextual gaming approach to guide students to make decisions and to monitor their learning during the gaming process. A digital game-based learning environment was developed based on this approach, and a quasi-experiment on the digital citizenship topic was conducted in northern Thailand to evaluate its effectiveness. The experimental results show that the proposed approach not only enhanced the students’ digital citizenship behaviours, but also promoted their motivations and perceptions. 1. Introduction Digital citizenship has been recognized by educators as an important learning activity for fostering digital natives’ safe daily life habits with the use of computers and communication technologies (Ng, 2012; Prensky, 2004; Ribble, 2011). Recent research has defned digital citizenship as an improvement in online respectful behaviour and online civic engagement by decreasing online harassment behaviour and increasing helpful bystander practices (Hollandsworth, Donovan, & Welch, 2017; Jones & Mitchell, 2016; Searson, Hancock, Soheil, & Shepherd, 2015). In recent years, there have been various social media platforms that allow individuals to create and share content, and to follow others, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. It is suggested that activities of * Corresponding author. E-mail address: panjaburee_p@hotmail.com (P. Panjaburee). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers & Education journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103998 Received 21 August 2019; Received in revised form 6 August 2020; Accepted 8 August 2020