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Opening the Black Box of Play: Strategy Analysis of an Educational Game

Published: 15 October 2016 Publication History

Abstract

A significant issue in research on educational games lies in evaluating their educational impact. Although game analytics is often leveraged in the game industry, it can also provide insight into player actions, strategy development, and the learning process in educational games separate from external evaluation measures. This paper explores the potential of game analytics for learning by analyzing player strategies of an educational game that is designed to support algorithmic thinking. We analyze player strategies from nine cases in our data, combining quantitative and qualitative game analysis techniques: hierarchical player clustering, game progression visualizations, playtraces, and think-aloud data. Results suggest that this combination of data analysis techniques provides insights into level progression and learning strategies that may have been otherwise overlooked.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI PLAY '16: Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
October 2016
424 pages
ISBN:9781450344562
DOI:10.1145/2967934
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 15 October 2016

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Author Tags

  1. computational thinking
  2. educational games
  3. evaluation
  4. playtrace analysis

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CHI PLAY '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 124 submissions, 29%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 421 of 1,386 submissions, 30%

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  • (2024)"Trust the Process": An Exploratory Study of Process Visualizations for Self-Reflection in League of LegendsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36771118:CHI PLAY(1-28)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
  • (2024)ProBee: A Provenance-based Design for an Educational Game Analytics ModelTechnology, Knowledge and Learning10.1007/s10758-024-09758-xOnline publication date: 4-Jul-2024
  • (2023)Studying the effects of educational games on cultivating computational thinking skills to primary school students: a systematic literature reviewJournal of Computers in Education10.1007/s40692-023-00300-z11:4(1283-1325)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2023
  • (2022)Exploring the Influence of Demographic Factors on Progression and Playtime in Educational GamesProceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3555858.3555873(1-15)Online publication date: 5-Sep-2022
  • (2022)Using e-Learning Standards to Improve Serious Game Deployment and Evaluation2022 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON52537.2022.9766573(2077-2083)Online publication date: 28-Mar-2022
  • (2022)Making FAQ Chatbots More Inclusive: An Examination of Non-Native English Users’ Interactions with New Technology in Massive Open Online CoursesInternational Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education10.1007/s40593-022-00311-433:3(752-780)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2022
  • (2022)Towards an Understanding of How Players Make Meaning from Post-Play Process VisualizationsEntertainment Computing – ICEC 202210.1007/978-3-031-20212-4_4(47-58)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2022
  • (2022)Are All Who Wander Lost? An Exploratory Analysis of Learner Traversals of Minecraft WorldsArtificial Intelligence in Education. Posters and Late Breaking Results, Workshops and Tutorials, Industry and Innovation Tracks, Practitioners’ and Doctoral Consortium10.1007/978-3-031-11647-6_48(263-266)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2022
  • (2022)Insights into computational thinking from think‐aloud interviews: A systematic reviewApplied Cognitive Psychology10.1002/acp.402937:1(71-95)Online publication date: 23-Dec-2022
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