Developing Sustainable Alliances: Emergent Collaborative Discourse in Sustainability Games as Form of Evolving Understandings

• In Event: Advanced Technology in STEM+C Education

Abstract

Emergent dialogue is a persuasive method for sustainability games to engage learners. Reflecting on personal networks of values and practices is effective in enabling personally relevant understanding. We designed City Settlers (CS), an interactive multiplayer city building simulation, to support this kind of emergent dialogue through collaborative gameplay. CS supports a plurality of interpersonal dynamics, which supports rich emergent discourse - speaking as well as enacting of systems understandings coupled with learner values. In this paper, we motivate and present the design of CS, and present multi modal data analyses looking at the Discourse that emerges in the form of different game plays, and the learning that it enables access to.

Authors

• Vishesh Kumar, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Mike Tissenbaum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign