Abstract
Educational games and tutors provide conflicting approaches to the assistance dilemma, yet there is little work that directly compares them. This study tested the effects of game-based and tutor-based assistance on learning and interest. The laboratory experiment randomly assigned 105 university students to two versions of the educational game Policy World designed to teach the skills of policy argument. The game version provided minimal feedback and imposed penalties during training while the tutor version provided additional step-level, knowledge-based feedback and required immediate error correction. The study measured students’ success during training, their interest in the game, and posttest performance. Tutor students were better able to analyze policy problems and reported higher level of competence which in turn affected interest. This suggests that we can improve the efficacy and interest in educational games by applying tutor-based approaches to assistance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Hays, R.T.: The Effectiveness of Instructional Games: A Literature Review and Discussion (Tech Rep. 2005-004). Storming Media (2005)
Aleven, V., Kay, J., Mostow, J. (eds.): ITS 2010. LNCS, vol. 6094 & 6095. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Dimitrova, V., Mizoguchi, R., du Boulay, B., Graesser, A. (eds.): Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education: Building Learning Systems that Care: From Knowledge Representation to Affective Modelling. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2009)
Lane, H.C., Ogan, A., Shute, V. (eds.): Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Educational Games at the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, Brighton, UK (2009)
Ogan, A., Aleven, V., Kim, J., Jones, C.: Intercultural Negotiation with Virtual Humans: The Effect of Social Goals on Gameplay and Learning. In: Aleven, V., Kay, J., Mostow, J. (eds.) ITS 2010. LNCS, vol. 6094, pp. 174–183. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Rowe, J.P., Mott, B.W., McQuiggan, S.W., Robison, J.L., Lee, S., Lester, J.C.: Crystal island: A narrative-centered learning environment for eigth grade microbiology. In: Lane, H.C., Ogan, A., Shute, V. (eds.) Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Educational Games at the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, Brighton, UK, pp. 11–20 (2009)
Lane, H.C., Hays, M.J., Auerbach, D., Core, M.G.: Investigating the Relationship between Presence and Learning in a Serious Game. In: Aleven, V., Kay, J., Mostow, J. (eds.) ITS 2010. LNCS, vol. 6094, pp. 274–284. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Cordova, D.I., Lepper, M.R.: Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning: Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. Journal of Educational Psychology 88(4), 715–730 (1996)
McQuiggan, S.W., Rowe, J.P., Lee, S., Lester, J.C.: Story-Based Learning: The Impact of Narrative on Learning Experiences and Outcomes. In: Woolf, B., Aïmeur, E., Nkambou, R., Lajoie, S. (eds.) ITS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5091, pp. 530–539. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Lane, H.C., Schneider, M., Albrechtsen, J.S., Meissner, C.A.: Virtual Humans with Secrets: Learning to Detect Verbal Cues to Deception. In: Aleven, V., Kay, J., Mostow, J. (eds.) ITS 2010. LNCS, vol. 6095, pp. 144–154. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Hallinen, N., Walker, E., Wylie, R., Ogan, A., Jones, C.: I was playing when I learned: A narrative game for French aspectual distinctions. In: Lane, H.C., Ogan, A., Shute, V. (eds.) Proceedings of the Workshop on Intelligent Educational Games at the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, Brighton, UK, pp. 117–120 (2009)
VanLehn, K.: The behavior of tutoring systems. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 16(3), 227–265 (2006)
Koedinger, K.R., Aleven, V.: Exploring the assistance dilemma in experiments with cognitive tutors. Educational Psychology Review 19(3), 239–264 (2007)
Easterday, M.W.: Policy world: A cognitive game for teaching deliberation. In: Pinkward, N., McLaren, B. (eds.) Educational Technologies for Teaching Argumentation Skills. Bentham Science Publishers, Oak Park (in press)
Easterday, M.W., Aleven, V., Scheines, R., Carver, S.M.: Constructing causal diagrams to learn deliberation. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 19(4), 425–445 (2009)
University of Rochester: Intrinsic motivation instrument, IMI (1994), http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/measures/IMI_description.php
Koedinger, K.R., Corbett, A.T.: Cognitive tutors: Technology bringing learning science to the classroom. In: Sawyer, K. (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, pp. 61–78. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2006)
Corbett, A.T., Anderson, J.R.: Locus of feedback control in computer-based tutoring: Impact on learning rate, achievement and attitudes. In: Jacko, J., Sears, A., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., Jacob, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 245–252. ACM Press, New York (2001)
Nathan, M.J.: Knowledge and situational feedback in a learning environment for algebra story problem solving. Interactive Learning Environments 5(1), 135–159 (1998)
Mathan, S.A., Koedinger, K.R.: Fostering the intelligent novice: Learning from errors with metacognitive tutoring. Educational Psychologist 40(4), 257–265 (2005)
Aleven, V., Myers, E., Easterday, M., Ogan, A.: Toward a framework for the analysis and design of educational games. In: Biswas, G., Carr, D., Chee, Y.S., Hwang, W.Y. (eds.) Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning, pp. 69–76. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2010)
Spirtes, P., Glymour, C., Scheines, R.: Causation, prediction, and search, 2nd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge (2000)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Easterday, M.W., Aleven, V., Scheines, R., Carver, S.M. (2011). Using Tutors to Improve Educational Games. In: Biswas, G., Bull, S., Kay, J., Mitrovic, A. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6738. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21869-9_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21869-9_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-21868-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-21869-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)