Evaluating the effects of orchestrated, game-based learning in virtual environments for informal education

Abstract

In informal learning spaces employing digital content, such as museums, visitors often do not get adequate exposure to content, or they passively receive instruction offered by a museum docent to the whole group. This research aims to identify which elements of co-located group collaboration, virtual environments, and serious games can be leveraged for an enhanced museum learning and entertaining experience. We developed C-OLiVE, an interactive virtual environment supporting tripartite group collaboration, which we used to explore our hypothesis that synchronous, colocated, group collaboration will afford greater learning compared to conventional approaches. In an empirical study, we found some evidence supporting this hypothesis, taking into consideration other factors such as game experience and social presence. Students participating in the three-player condition demonstrated a better understanding of the collaborative tasks compared to their single-player counterparts. We discuss these results and outline future studies using the same virtual environment.

Enhancing Our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality

“…So, the capability for virtual environments shared by multiple participants has been around for a long time, supported by many platforms, and realized in massive online systems such as Second Life, although typically non-immersively. The work by Apostolellis and Bowman (2014) is a good recent illustration of collaboration in a learning context that was realized with screen-based displays. The early days of research in this area, apart from the technical issues of how to build systems, concentrated on exploiting the capabilities of VR to improve remote collaboration beyond what might be possible even in face-to-face communications -for example, the type of work reported in Benford and Fahlén (1993) and Koleva et al (2001).…”

Small group learning with games in museums

“…Accumulating evidence suggests that unguided instruction during discovery learning often proves to be less effective as compared to guided instruction [19]. Since in our previous study [3] unguided students showed reduced learning gains as a result of a poorer game experience, in the current study we also evaluated the impact of facilitation during collaborative game play.…”

“…Following up on our previous study in the US [3], in this paper we report our findings from our second experiment with a different population, in a museum space in Greece. Our hypothesis was that culturally driven prior exposure to and interest in the subject would improve game experience and consequently learning, as these two variables were shown to be positively correlated in our first study.…”

“…In a first study with middle school students in a controlled environment, we found that tripartite co-located collaboration was associated with improved learning benefits over passively watching someone play a game [3]. However, this prior study ignored the possible impact of guided instruction in discovery learning settings.…”

“…A single large front-projected non-stereoscopic display is used by all players with individual viewpoints, and also includes vital information about the game, like feedback about their actions. A more detailed description of the game design, the interface, and the tasks can be found in [3]. …”