Hint Usage and Player Strategy in an Engineering Game for Young Children

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Topic - Technology, Media & Child Development

Abstract

The concept of scaffolding, or supporting a learner in achieving a goal she wouldn’t reach on her own (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976) easily finds its way into digital games, where it can be represented as hints (Melero, Hernandez-Leo & Blat, 2011), contextual information that players can access through a button tap. Hints can provide encouragement and guidance towards learning, and also help unblock learners who might otherwise disengage from the experience. In this study, we analyze the relationship between hint usage and subsequent player strategy and performance in Base Builder, a design and engineering game that is part of the PBS KIDS Ready, Jet, Go! Space Scouts app, available free of charge for Apple’s iOS and Android mobile devices and targeting children ages 5 to 8. Base Builder consists of increasingly challenging levels where players are asked to build shelters for astronaut figurines. The shelters must withstand progressively more severe weather events. The character host praises iterative attempts, encourages players to look at the challenges from different perspectives and also points out a hint button for additional help. Tapping the hint button causes one of a series of hints to be shown. Hints appear in the same order in all levels: first, a message of encouragement without specific information about the challenge; then, the correct location of one or more pieces is shown in one or two hints; next, a blueprint of the full solution appears and finally, the character host informs the player that there are no more hints.

We tracked anonymous player movements, such as piece placements and removals, along with requests for hints, in Base Builder through the PBS KIDS Learning Analytics Platform (Roberts, Chung & Parks, 2016). The data collected between July 1 and September 22, 2020 includes 3,768 unique users, who played a total of 15,739 game sessions, including a total of 63,384 rounds, or attempts to solve a level. Of these users, 56% requested a hint at least once. Hints were requested during 20% (12,696) of played rounds. Rounds where at least one hint was requested were solved successfully more often than rounds where no hints were requested: 65% and 42% of the time, respectively. Considering only the first time each player was able to complete a challenge, we found an expected pattern where, in early levels, most players who complete rounds do so without any hints and with a lower number of movements than players who requested one or more hints. As difficulty increases, a larger proportion of successful players complete the challenges with an increasing number of hints. Interestingly, players who only completed the challenge after requesting all hints made fewer piece movements after each of the earlier hints, suggesting that they might have learned that clicking the hint button repeatedly would reveal the solution. Continued analysis will consider the evolution of placement and removal of game pieces in relationship to specific hint content and usage as players proceed through the challenges from easier to hardest.

Authors

• Silvia Lovato, Public Broadcasting Service
  Presenting Author

• Cosimo Felline, PBS KIDS
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jeremy Roberts, Public Broadcasting Service
  Non-Presenting Author