Development of a Game Communities of Inquiry Scale (GCoIS)

Abstract

This article introduces a new instrument called the game communities of inquiry scale (GCoIS). It was inspired by the community of inquiry framework and its related questionnaires. The purpose of the scale is to explore game communities from an educational perspective. It was validated with 1,275 players inhabiting digital outlets like Twitch.tv, Reddit, and Discord. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were completed, leading to a final scale composed of 14 items subdivided in three subscales: 1) community attractiveness, 2) community receptiveness, and 3) community cognition. The paper describes the development and testing of the instrument. It concludes with implications for scholars and practitioners who can employ this instrument for understanding game communities and their traits.

Playing is just the beginning: Social learning dynamics in game communities of inquiry

“…It must be noted that the use of coefficient alpha has been recently criticized (McNeish, 2018) because it would provide reduced estimates of reliability. This measure is here reported because it was adopted in the GCoIS validation study (Soyturk et al, 2020) and still points at a satisfactory reliability. However, alternatives (see McNeish, 2018) may be considered in future studies.…”

“…An online survey built on Qualtrics was deployed and shared on several subreddits and Steam channels focused on video games with a social component (competitive and/or collaborative) (e.g., Fortnite, Minecraft, Eve Online, Call of Duty); this choice was motivated by the fact that these genres are more popular and socially interactive than single player games (e.g., Prey, The Witcher, Hades) because they depend on other players more and are frequently revised and updated, generating new challenges on an ongoing basis (Gandolfi, 2018). The questionnaire included demographic, that is, gender, age, ethnicity—and game platform‐related—that is, time spent playing video games (weekly), time spent on game related social media (weekly), preferred game related media platforms (if private oriented like Discord or public like Reddit) ‐ questions, and the Game Community of Inquiry Scale (GCoIS) (Soyturk et al, 2020).…”

“…From this construct, Soyturk et al (2020) developed the Game Community of Inquiry (GCoI) framework for measuring how game communities learn together online, involving over n = 1000 players in validating the Game Community of Inquiry scale (GCoIS). They found three main components leading meaningful game communities: 1.…”

“…From this construct, Soyturk et al (2020) developed the Game Community of Inquiry (GCoI) framework for measuring how game communities learn together online, involving over n = 1000 players in validating the Game Community of Inquiry scale (GCoIS). They found three main components leading meaningful game communities: Community Attractiveness, which is the appeal of a given game community from the outside. Community Receptiveness, which is the degree a community listens to its members and is driven by an inclusive environment. Community Cognition, which refers to how a community stimulates its followers from a cognitive perspective. …”

“…This article aims to address this gap by deploying the game community of inquiry framework and its cognitive presence component (Garrison et al, 2000;Soyturk et al, 2020) along with the social learning theory model (Bandura, 1963(Bandura, , 1977 for understanding how online gaming players learn with and from their reference community of inquiry. More specifically, the findings of a survey involving n = 480 adult players have been used for understanding which behaviours are observed and reproduced by gamers, looking at types of strategies followed and context of reproduction.…”