The Relationship between Educational Serious Games, Gender, and Students’ Social Interaction

Internet age students are increasingly interested in learning by playing. The majority of the current educational computer games suffer from the inapplicability of supporting the course materials’ learning objectives. In consequence, the integration of educational video games into the curriculum usually met with resistance from some teachers, administrators, and parents. Multi-player educational serious games (MPESGs) are introduced as a new type of educational computer games. Educators and researchers increasingly believe in MPESGs as a tool for interactive learning. MPESGs might not only motivate students to learn, but also provide them with innovative ways to develop understandings of abstract concepts. In addition, the integration of MPESGs in learning environment might promote social interaction among students. This study focused on exploring MPESGs as a new educational tool. A MPESG called The Village of Belknap was developed in Second Life to be used as a prototype in this study. Experimental results were carried out and the results indicated that the gender did not influence students’ perceptions of social interaction during playing the game. In addition, the results revealed that the integration of the MPESG in the learning process did not lead to a significant difference in the perception of social interaction between the students who participated in the online session and the students who participated in the face-to-face session. KeywordsAvatar, CVE, Educational Games, Role-Playing Game, Second Life, Serious Game.