Co-located collaborative learning video game with single display groupware

Abstract

Role Game is a co-located CSCL video game played by three students sitting at one machine sharing a single screen, each with their own input device. Inspired by video console games, Role Game enables students to learn by doing, acquiring social abilities and mastering subject matter in a context of co-located collaboration. After describing the system’s ludic and gaming structure, we present an experiment conducted in a kindergarten situation, whose results are subjected to a usability analysis. We conclude that a console video game for learning applications such as Role Game can easily be operated by 6-year-old students who are yet to learn to read or operate a computer. Console multiplayer games designed for learning are shown to be a powerful device for collaborative work in the classroom while maintaining its attractiveness to the gamer. They are consistent with the need to align learning software with the school curriculum, creating a socio-technical environment that can support meta-design and social creativity in an educational setting. Our findings thus confirm McFarlane´ s view that they ‘‘provide a forum in which learning arises as a result of tasks stimulated by the content of the games, knowledge is developed through the content of the game and skills are developed as a result of playing the game’’.