Kori Inkpen

Playing together beats playing apart, especially for girls

This paper describes follow-on studies focusing on how gender and grouping affects performance and attitudes of children playing a puzzle solving game called The Incredible Machine (TIM). We found that children playing together on one machine solved significantly more puzzles than children playing alone on one machine. Female/Female pairs playing together on one machine, on average, completed significantly more puzzles than Female/Female pairs playing side-by-side on two computers. In addition, the level of motivation to continue playing the game was affected by the opportunity to play with a partner, and success in the game. This paper describes follow-on studies focusing on how gender and grouping affects performance and attitudes of children playing a puzzle solving game called The Incredible Machine (TIM). We found that children playing together on one machine solved significantly more puzzles than children playing alone on one machine. Female/Female pairs playing together on one machine, on average, completed significantly more puzzles than Female/Female pairs playing side-by-side on two computers. In addition, the level of motivation to continue playing the game was affected by the opportunity to play with a partner, and success in the game

Give and take: children collaborating on one computer

When two children work together on one computer, it is necessary for them to share the input devices. This study examines the effects of having multiple mice with two different control passing protocols: Give and Take. The results suggest that having two mice instead of a single mouse affects the performance of a pair of children playing on a shared computer. This result was gender dependent in that girls solved the most puzzles in the Give condition while boys solved the most puzzles in the Take condition. Moreover, boys in the Take condition exhibited a larger number of exchanges of control than all other experimental conditions.

Adapting the human-computer interface to support collaborative learning environments for children

The presence of computers in schools has grown tremendously over the last ten years. In the wake of this enormous growth, sound research on how to effectively design learning environments and successfully integrate computers into the classroom is needed. The research described in this dissertation evaluates computer-based collaborative learning environments for children using three important criteria: (a) the social environment in which the technology is placed, (b) the technology that provides for explicit collaboration, and (c) the low-level interface design. An additional focus of the research, which crosses all three themes, is gender. The research comprised three experimental studies that were conducted in the three research themes. A l l these studies employed a creative problem-solving game as the research vehicle. The social theme of the research focuses on the interactions between children mediated by computers. We examined whether the ways children were assigned to work on computers affected their achievement and their motivation. Our results show that how children are asked to use computers does in fact affect their achievement. Grouping children around a single computer can have a positive effect on both achievement and motivation compared to having children play on their own computers. The technology theme of the research focuses on extending computer technology from single-user computers to technology more suited to supporting collaboration in a multi-user environment. We modified the computer environment (both the hardware and the software) to allow the addition of a second mouse to see how this change would affect the childrens achievement, learning, and behaviour while playing a puzzle-solving game collaboratively. The results show that the addition