Collaborative Learning Games in the Virtual Classroom: Piloting Grockit at Florida Virtual School

Ari Bader-Natal · Jeramy Gatza

Thu., June 10, 11:00–12:30, Tripp Commons (Center)

A virtual school can offer a student the ability to complete a course on their own schedule, from any location. The challenge in providing a flexible, individualized learning environment is that students may feel disconnected from each other, and can miss the opportunity to learn from interactions with their peers. Multi-player online learning games may hold a solution. By providing a venue for learners to connect and interact, these games can extend the benefits of collaborative learning opportunities to the geographically-dispersed students in a virtual school.

In this workshop, we will introduce Grockit, a synchronous web-based collaborative learning platform that incorporates game mechanics drawn from MMOs and learning dynamics modeled after peer study groups. Participants with laptops will have the opportunity to try out activities in Grockit first-hand, and can explore the social, motivational, and collaborative aspects of the platform.

Participants will learn about a pilot study carried out at Florida Virtual School, in which 75 students enrolled in the Algebra I course used the games in Grockit for one month as a supplement to the standard course curriculum. We share results from this pilot, focusing specifically on:

• Data from pre- and post-pilot surveys focusing on self-efficacy, collaboration, and engagement.
• Findings from a controlled study, comparing learning gains of students who did vs. did not participate in Grockit as a supplement to their Florida Virtual School Algebra I curriculum.
• Open-ended feedback that we received from teachers, parents, and students involved in the pilot.

Our goal for this workshop is to share with participants both an intuitive sense and data-grounded evidence about how multi-player learning games, like those in Grockit, can help connect, motivate, and engage students who are geographically and socially isolated. The workshop will conclude with a group-wide discussion of other experiences with, and opportunities for, using game-based collaborations as a way to connect learners across the web.

References

Bader-Natal, A. (October, 2009). Interaction synchronicity in web-based collaborative learning systems. Proceedings of the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 1121-1129). Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Bader-Natal, A. (July, 2009). Incorporating game mechanics into a network of online study groups. Supplementary Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (Vol. 3) (pp. 109-112). Brighton, UK.