Collective Gaming: Lessons for Designing 21st-Century Classroom Learning

• In Event: Fiddling on the Fly: Thinking, Learning, and Designing Using Board Games

Abstract

In today’s society, being able to effectively work in groups is of growing importance and is the object of study of collaborative learning research. To date, most prior research in this field has focused on understanding various dimensions of group work, such as productivity of different group arrangements (Engelmann & Hesse, 2010), design of scaffolds, argumentation practices (Scheuer, Loll, Pinkwart, & McLaren, 2010) and interactions between online and offline collaborations (Birchfield & Megowan-Romanowicz, 2009). Research on collaboration has resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of research studies that have investigated various aspects of collaboration, including the nature of various group arrangements such as reciprocal teaching or jigsaw techniques, interactions with members of different gender, race, ability, and experience, and causes for success and failures of group work (Webb & Palincsar, 1996). Prior research has built on this substantial body of research and provides compelling evidence that collaborative learning – the ability to interact in and contribute to small groups -- can be arranged and even fostered in instrumental ways.

However, very little attention has been paid to particularly how games can be used to foster (or inversely, undermine) learning in collaborative environments. Games, including board games, videogames, and MMOGs, often have strong cooperative or collaborative component to successful game play. Current research also stresses the importance of collective learning – the ability to interact in and contribute to large groups and not just dyads or small groups of 4-5 learners (Peppler & Kafai, 2008; Kafai & Peppler, 2011). Additionally, as games become more popular in educational learning contexts, it’s important to understand how games effect the larger classroom activity systems as well as how games can be designed to promote learning.

In this study, we use video transcribed for speech and gesture and a form of discourse analysis to compare the experiences of a group of 40 early elementary students engaged in a uniquely designed board game about the complexity of bees collecting nectar that accommodated either (a) individual or (b) collective point systems. We found that, in collective mode, players were significantly more likely to make positive comments to others, talk on-topic, read instructions to other players, gaze toward the board as well as other players, and take shorter turns among other findings. Implications of this work for designing games to promote positive collaborative learning experiences across all age ranges but particularly for early elementary school-aged children is discussed.

Authors

• Joshua Adam Danish, Indiana University

• David Phelps, Indiana University