Abstract
Mathematics is often perceived as a subject involving abstract formulas and is considered less enjoyable by some students, resulting in limited active participation during the learning process. Many teachers have attempted to engage students in mathematics learning activities through games. A game-based learning media design oriented toward local culture is expected to enhance computational skills, and its effectiveness needs to be examined. This article reports a study on the effectiveness of a local-content learning medium in the form of a non-digital game “jellyfish hunt”. The study was conducted with 25 ninth-grade students at a public junior high school in the suburban area of Malang Regency, Indonesia, using the topic of Exponential Numbers. The research focused solely on computational skills, and the analysis was carried out using the implementation of SEDVIA (Survey, Evaluation, Design, Validation, Implementation, Analysis). The analysis results showed that the average final score of the five teams was 75.4%, which falls into Category B (fairly effective), rather than Category A (effective). The effectiveness of games as pedagogical tools should be further investigated when they are used for teaching mathematical concepts.
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