Perceived Sociability and Social Presence in a Collaborative Serious Game

Abstract

Collaborative serious games have proven to have the potential to support joint knowledge construction, and there is a growing interest in applying such games to promote high-level learning. However, most of the existing studies have focused on the effects of functional, task-specific support while ignoring the social aspects of collaborative learning. This study is one aim to fill in the knowledge gap in order to understand how learners experience educational games as a means of social interaction and collaboration. The findings indicated that the game environment facilitated and supported players’ socio-emotional processes by eliciting students’ social presence and sociability. This has been further shown to play an important role in the emergence of social interaction and collaborative learning. These results can be applied in the design of collaborative educational games that support social aspects of collaborative learning.

Subjective Experience and Sociability in a Collaborative Serious Game

“…Our previous findings have indicated that the sociability of a game environment is connected to the emergent sense of social presence (Oksanen & Hämäläinen, 2013). The results of the current study first reinforce the idea that social presence is an essential part of the game experience in multiplayer games.…”

“…From the game experience point of view, we focus on studies that use the GEQ to evaluate subjective game experiences in entertainment (Poels et al, 2008) and serious games (De Grove et al, 2010). From the collaborative learning perspective, we look at the results of this case study in relation to our previous studies using the same game as in this study (Hämäläinen & Oksanen, 2012; Oksanen & Hämäläinen, 2013).…”

“…GAME BRIDGE (GB) is a collaboratively scripted multiplayer game with a focus on task solving in the area of human sustainability. By collaboration scripting, we mean designing structures of game tasks and game mechanics that require effort and commitment from several players along with social interaction and collaboration among the members of the group to be solved (for a more precise description of the game, see Oksanen & Hämäläinen, 2013). The game requires four to five players to run.…”

“…In massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), sociability can be encouraged, for example, through the available player interdependencies, game space, and interaction system (Ducheneaut et al, 2007). The sociability of the environment has been found to be associated with the emergence of a sense of social presence in both traditional asynchronous learning environments (Kreijns et al, 2007) and in collaborative serious games (Oksanen & Hämäläinen, 2013).…”

“…Against this background, this case study aims to narrow the knowledge gap in the understanding of collaborative serious game experiences and the relationship between the social dimension of gaming and core game experiences. This study is part of a larger body of research that investigates the potentials and challenges of using serious games to promote collaborative learning (Hämäläinen & Oksanen, 2012; Oksanen & Hämäläinen, 2013). In our previous studies, we have focused, for example, on collaborative serious games as sociable computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments or as spaces for social interaction and collaborative activities (Oksanen & Hämäläinen, 2013).…”