Eleanor O'Rourke
ABSTRACT
Student retention is a central challenge in systems for learning at scale. It has been argued that educational video games could improve student retention by providing engaging experiences and informing the design of other online learning environments. However, educational games are not uniformly effective. Our recent research shows that player retention can be increased by using a brain points incentive structure that rewards behaviors associated with growth mindset, or the belief that intelligence can grow. In this paper, we expand on our prior work by providing new insights into how growth mindset behaviors can be effectively promoted in the educational game Refraction. We present results from an online study of 25,000 children who were exposed to five different versions of the brain points intervention. We find that growth mindset animations cause a large number of players to quit, while brain points encourage persistence. Most importantly, we find that awarding brain points randomly is ineffective; the incentive structure is successful specifically because it rewards desirable growth mindset behaviors. These findings have important implications that can support the future generalization of the brain points intervention to new educational contexts.
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Index Terms
- Brain Points: A Deeper Look at a Growth Mindset Incentive Structure for an Educational Game
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Reviews
Stewart Mark Godwin
This research builds on previous work by the authors and follows up with an experimental design that adds depth to the original paper [1]. A growth mindset is the belief that student intelligence can be taught and will increase over time. This research encourages a growth mindset by "using a novel brain points incentive structure that directly rewards students for their [persistence and] effort." Following up from the previous research, the authors constructed five different versions of an educational game to answer four research questions. One version of the game was used as the control while the other four versions examined each of the question variables of the research topic. The first study used a sample size of 15,000 students while this study used a larger sample size of 25,000 students. This enormous sample size is the reason the authors could not compare the data from each of the four versions of the educational game. Despite this limitation, each question did reveal significant information; for example, the narrative animation in the game did cause players to quit before starting the first level. However, the brain points incentive increased player persistence and was effective because it rewarded desirable growth mindset behavior. In conclusion, this research has the potential to improve student retention in online education and should be of interest to all educational professionals. Online Computing Reviews Service
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