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Is More Agency Better? The Impact of Student Agency on Game-Based Learning

2017; Springer Science+Business Media; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-319-61425-0_28

1611-3349

Robert G. Sawyer, Andy Smith, Jonathan Rowe, Roger Azevedo, James C. Lester,

Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Adaptive Learning

Student agency has long been viewed as a critical element in game-based learning. Agency refers to the degree of freedom and control that a student has to perform meaningful actions in a learning environment. While long postulated to be central to student self-regulation, there is limited evidence on the design of game-based learning environments that promote student agency and its effect on learning. This paper reports on an experiment to investigate the impact of student agency on learning and problem-solving behavior in a game-based learning environment for microbiology. Students interacted with one of three versions of the system. In the High Agency condition, students could freely navigate the game's 3D open-world environment and perform problem-solving actions in any order they chose. In the Low Agency condition, students were required to traverse the environment and solve the mystery in a prescribed partially ordered sequence. In the No Agency condition, students watched a video of an expert playing the game by following an "ideal path" for solving the problem scenario. Results indicate that students in the Low Agency condition achieved greater learning gains than students in both the High Agency and No Agency conditions, but exhibited more unproductive behaviors, suggesting that artfully striking a balance between high and low agency best supports learning.