Co-located collaborative learning video game with single display groupware

Role Game is a co-located CSCL video game played by three students sitting at one machinesharing a single screen, each with their own input device. Inspired by video console games, RoleGame enables students to learn by doing, acquiring social abilities and mastering subject matterin a context of co-located collaboration. After describing the system’s ludic and gamingstructure, we present an experiment conducted in a kindergarten situation, whose results aresubjected to a usability analysis. We conclude that a console video game for learningapplications such as Role Game can easily be operated by six-year-old students who have yet tolearn to read or operate a computer. Console multiplayer games designed for learning are shownto be a powerful device for collaborative work in the classroom while maintaining itsattractiveness to the gamer. They are consistent with the need to align learning software with theschool curriculum, creating a socio-technical environment that can support meta-design andsocial 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 thegames, knowledge is developed through the content of the game, and skills are developed as aresult of playing the game”.