Abstract
Learning in educational games is often associated with some form of competition. We investigated how students responded to winning or losing in an educational math game, with respect to playing with or without a Teachable Agent (TA). Students could choose between game modes in which the TA took a more passive or active role, or let the TA play a game entirely on its own. Based on the data logs from 3983 games played by 163 students (age 10–11), we analyzed data on students’ persistence, challenge-seeking and performance during gameplay. Results indicated that students showed greater persistence when playing together with the TA, by more often repeating a lost game with the TA, than a lost game after playing alone. Students’ challenge-seeking, by increasing the difficulty level, was greater following a win than following a loss, especially after the TA won on its own. Students’ gameplay performance was unaffected by their TA winning or losing but was, unexpectedly, slightly worse following a win by the student alone. We conclude that engaging a TA can make students respond more productively to both winning and losing, depending on the particular role the TA takes in the game. These results may inform more specific hypotheses as to the differential effects of competing and collaborating in novel, AI-supported social constellations, such as with TAs, on students’ motivation and ego-involvement in educational games.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Gee, J.P.: What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York (2007)
Pareto, L.: A teachable agent game engaging primary school children to learn arithmetic concepts and reasoning. Int. J. AI Educ. 24, 251–283 (2014)
Pareto, L., Haake, M., Lindström, P., Sjödén, B., Gulz, A.: A teachable agent based game affording collaboration and competition – evaluating math comprehension and motivation. Educ. Technol. Res. Dev. 60(5), 723–751 (2012)
Biswas, G., Segedy, J.R., Bunchongchit, K.: From design to implementation to practice a learning by teaching system: Betty’s brain. Int. J. Artif. Intell. Educ. 1–15 (2015)
Chase, C., Chin, D., Oppezzo, M., Schwartz, D.: Teachable agents and the protégé effect: increasing the effort towards learning. J. Sci. Educ. Technol. 18, 334–352 (2009)
Matsuda, N., Yarzebinski, E., Keiser, V., Raizada, R., Stylianides, G.J., Koedinger, K.R.: Studying the effect of a competitive game show in a learning by teaching environment. Int. J. Artif. Intell. Educ. 23(1–4), 1–21 (2013)
Bargh, J., Schul, Y.: On the cognitive benefits of teaching. J. Educ. Psychol. 72, 593–604 (1980)
Lindström, P., Gulz, A., Haake, M., Sjödén, B.: Matching and mismatching between the pedagogical design principles of a maths game and the actual practices of play. J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 27, 90–102 (2011)
Ogan, A., Finkelstein, S., Mayfield, E., D’Adamo, C., Matsuda, N., Cassell, J.: Oh dear stacy! Social interaction, elaboration, and learning with teachable agents. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 39–48. ACM (2012)
Okita, S.Y., Schwartz, D.L.: Learning by teaching human pupils and teachable agents: the importance of recursive feedback. J. Learn. Sci. 22, 375–412 (2013)
Butler, R.: Interest in the task and interest in peers’ work in competitive and non-competitive conditions: a developmental study. Child Dev. 60, 562–570 (1989)
Vansteenkiste, M., Deci, E.L.: Competitively contingent rewards and intrinsic motivation: can losers remain motivated? Motiv. Emotion 27(4), 273–299 (2003)
Reeve, J., Deci, E.L.: Elements within the competitive situation that affect intrinsic motivation. Personality Soc. Psychol. Bull. 22, 24–33 (1996)
Matsuda, N., Yarzebinski, E., Keiser, V., Raizada, R., Stylianides, G.J., Cohen, W.W., Koedinger, K.R.: Learning by teaching simstudent – an initial classroom baseline study comparing with cognitive tutor. In: Biswas, G., Bull, S., Kay, J., Mitrovic, A. (eds.) AIED 2011. LNCS, vol. 6738, pp. 213–221. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-21869-9_29
Chin, D.B., Dohmen, I.M., Cheng, B.H., Oppezzo, M.A., Chase, C.C., Schwartz, D.L.: Preparing students for future learning with teachable agents. Educ. Technol. Res. Dev. 58(6), 649–669 (2010)
Ross, S.M., Morrison, G.R., Lowther, D.L.: Educational technology research past and present: balancing rigor and relevance to impact school learning. Contemp. Educ. Technol. 1(1), 17–35 (2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sjödén, B., Lind, M., Silvervarg, A. (2017). Can a Teachable Agent Influence How Students Respond to Competition in an Educational Game?. In: André, E., Baker, R., Hu, X., Rodrigo, M., du Boulay, B. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10331. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61425-0_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61425-0_29
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61424-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61425-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)