Calvin C. Y. Liao

Equal opportunity tactic: Redesigning and applying competition games in classrooms

Competition, despite its potential drawbacks, is an easily adopted and frequently used motivator in classrooms. Individual abilities, in the years of schooling, are inevitably different, and performance in competition is heavily ability dependent, resulting that more-able students always win while less-able students always lose. Students easily perceive how well they perform through the result of competition, which is termed as perceived performance in this paper. Consistently demonstrating lower perceived performance than their peers, the less-able students feel discouraged and frustrated, hardly having the same opportunity for owning the sense of achievement as the more-able students. In this study, the authors designed a computerized mechanism, equal opportunity tactic, to lessen the difference in perceived performance between more-able and less-able students. Equal opportunity tactic is incorporated into a version of a competitive learning game called AnswerMatching, in which every student is assigned an opponent with similar ability. An experiment was also conducted to preliminarily investigate the effectiveness and effects of the tactic. Results showed that equal opportunity tactic could reduce the effect of individual ability difference on the perceived performance as well as the belief about how well students could achieve. In other words, less-able students could have similar opportunity of success and build confidence similar to more-able students in a competition.

Animal companions: Fostering children's effort-making by nurturing virtual pets

Virtual character is a significant application in the research field of technology-enhanced learning. In this study, the concept of animal companions, ‘non-smart’ virtual characters, is proposed as a way to encourage students to promote effort-making learning behaviours. The two underpinning design rationales are first discussed followed by the description of the development of a practical application, the My-Pet v2 system. A preliminary experiment was conducted to examine the system usability in terms of cognitive, affective and time-on-task characteristics. The results reveal that participants in the group using a complete version of My-Pet v2 showed better quality of effort-making learning behaviours. Some implications and future research directions are also discussed.

Learning by Pet-training Competition: Alleviating Negative Influences of Direction Competition by Training Pets to Compete in Game-Based Environments

Competition is a powerful motivator in game-based learning but direct competition might bring negative influences on students when they lose the competition, such as damage to confidence. In this paper, we propose an approach to alleviate such negative influences—learning by pet-training competition, which provides an indirect competition environment to enhance students to learn through training their pets. That is, students learn Chinese idioms in a pet-training game scenario, and their mastery is related to the pets’ strength to win the competition. In such environment, the competition result might be regarded as a matter whether students spend enough time in learning. This attribution might alleviate the negative influence that results from the direct competition.

My-Mini-Pet: The Design of Pet-Nurturing Handheld Game

Mobile learning brings us more learning opportunities due to the characteristics of learning devices and wireless computing. Recently, game-based learning also provides promising benefits in childrenpsilas leaning. Therefore, how to design a game-based learning environment in handheld devices by combining an existing game with different learning activities is a significant research issue. In this paper, we attempt to incorporate game elements with the learning environment design in the PDA for students. Three considerations for the learning environment design in the hand-held devices are discussed: game element design, small screen design, and learner-centered design. According to these three considerations, a pet-nurturing game environment in the PDA, My-Mini-Pet system, is developed, including three components: emotional attachment, learning guidance, and costume show. The design rationale behind the My-Mini-Pet system is that taking good care of the Mini-My-Pet is actually improving the learnerpsilas learning status.

Exploring the effectiveness of an idea-centered design to foster a computer-supported knowledge building environment

This paper compares the effectiveness of two multimedia environments-- Blackboard Learning System™ and Knowledge Forum™--in terms of their underlying design approaches to support collaborative learning and knowledge work. The two design approaches are (1) a conventional theme-based approach, i.e., to center group collaboration and meaning interaction around themes, and (2) an idea-centered approach, i.e., to center group collaboration and meaning interaction around sustained idea exchange and improvement. Findings suggest that an idea-centered design approach seems more likely to construct an environment that fosters more dynamic group and meaning interactions, thus enabling more sustained collaborative learning and knowledge building.

Designing the game-based environment to facilitate learners' interaction in performance-based learning by virtual pets

Digital game-based learning attracts increasingly attention due to its positive influences on learning. Different games promote different aspects of learning. This paper attempts to propose a performance-based learning (PeBL) approach to create stage contexts in game-based learning environments. A My-Pet-and-Our-Stage system is developed according to this PeBL approach, and contains My-Pet and Our-Stage, which contains pet-nurturing mode and task learning mode, pet-performance mode and pet-performance mode, respectively. The learners in order to gain identity-making in front-stage, and therefore the learners need to be effort-making in back-stage. Since these the animal companions are driven by learner models.

Quest Island: Developing Quest-Driven Learning Model by Blending Learning Tasks with Game Quests in a Virtual World

Researchers has pointed out that educational game frameworks are still required more investigations to facilitate the harmony of game and learning, as well as its practical use in educational settings. In this paper, we propose a quest-driven learning model (1) to address the design issue how to blend learning tasks with game quests. (2) to explore its educational benefits on students’ goal setting and continual participation. To this end, a game-based environment, named Quest Island, is implemented based on this quest-driven learning model. In addition, an experiment was also conducted in a primary class to evaluate its effectiveness on three dimensions: goal setting, attempted quest, and accomplished rate. The questionnaire results showed that game quests can contribute to students’ goal content and goal intensity. Data of attempted quests also supported game quests’ positive influence on goal setting. However, students’ academic achievements did not reveal significant differences between the two versions with and without game quests.

Designing a Simulation Game to Help Children Learn the Concept of Financial Management

In this paper, we present a simulation game about financial management for children to help them learn significant concepts in the finance education. Different from traditional delivery of paper-based knowledge, simulation games can provide a number of opportunities to control and manipulate something in the virtual game environment. Thus, students, particularly children, can experience what they hardly do in the real life. Based on the design rationale, we are developing a prototype system which contains several functions about financial management. For example, students can learn the concept of working for earning money, note taking, saving money in the bank, and investing in the stock market.

Preparation-before-Competition: Designing a Game-Based Environment to Facilitate Making Effort before Pet-Competitive Stage

Although competitive games have multi-fold benefits to students’ learning, such as motivation, satisfaction, and effectiveness, inappropriate competitive learning activities may have some negative impacts on students. From the literature, the authors have identified three main strategies which may reduce the negative impacts in competition game. However, because these strategies target only at the design of competition, the learning effects is limited. In fact, learning also happens in the preparation before competition. Hence, this study adopts preparation-before-competition approach to foster the habit of endeavor. That is, students make more effort to learn; they will win more easily. An animal companion system, entitled My-Pet-Trainer system, was implemented according to such approach. The system encourages students to improve their learning in the preparation stage where the virtual pets represent students’ open learner models before the competition stage. In addition, the paper also considers the symbiosis and emotional relationship with virtual pets to maintain long-term interactions.

My-Pet-and-Her-Friends: Identifying Educational Roles of Animal Companions in Game-based Learning Environment

Virtual characters simulated by computers have been a subject for research and development in both artificial intelligence in education (AIED) and video game design. Between AIED and video games there is an emerging enterprise, that is, virtual characters in video learning game design. This paper proposes a profile-driven-interaction (PDI) framework which borrows the design experience of virtual characters from AIED research to that for video learning games. The PDI framework enables virtual characters to take roles for various educational purposes based on the learner model of that learner and learner models of other learners. These virtual characters are designed in such a way that when they interact with a learner, the learner is actually improving her learning status. Based on this framework, a video learning game, called My-Pet-and-Her-Friends, is developed to address some relevant issues in the learning process, in particular, the issues of engagement and reflection of the learner.