IMPROVING SOCIAL AWARENESS THROUGH THOUGHT BUBBLES AND

FLASHBACKS OF VIRTUAL CHARACTERS

Jeroen Linssen + Mariët Theune +

Thomas de Groot + Dirk Heylen

MOTIVATION

GOAL

Feedback in a

serious game for

social skills training

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LEARNING GOALS DOMAIN

LOITER

PLAYER ACTION

CHARACTER ACTION

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META-TECHNIQUES

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LARP META-INFORMATION

THOUGHT BUBBLE FLASHBACK

THOUGHT BUBBLES

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CONTENT

Player’s attitude

TIMING

Every other action

THOUGHT BUBBLES

12 9

Relations

between

concepts

Situational

judgement

test

X ?

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EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN MEASURES

THOUGHT BUBBLES

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CONCEPT RELATIONS

Slight increase in

coherence

SJT

No significant

difference

COMMENTS

Possibly useful tool

Interaction too short

Too easy

FLASHBACKS

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CONTENT

Player’s average attitude

TIMING

At start of 2nd + 3rd scenario

GAME IMPROVEMENTS

Play length + char. personality

13 15

FLASHBACKS

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EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN MEASURES

Situational

judgement

test

(improved)

X ?

FLASHBACKS

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SJT

No significant

learning gains

COMMENTS

Suitable for less

experienced students

Still too easy

WRAP UP

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GOAL

Improve learning

through feedback on

character’s cognitive

attitude

RESULTS

Hypotheses not

supported

Positive comments

FUTURE WORK

Choice of action

Evaluating with less

experienced students

JMLIN.EU/PHD j.m.linssen@utwente.nl

REFERENCES

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Kim, J.M., Hill Jr., R.W., Durlach, P.J., Lane, H.C., Forbell, E., Core, M., Marsella, S., Pynadath, D., Hart, J.: BiLAT: a game-based environment for practicing negotiation in a cultural context. Int. J. Artif. Intell. Educ.19, 289–308 (2009)

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Linssen, J.M., Theune, M.: Meta-techniques for a social awareness learning game. In: Proceedings of ECGBL 2014, pp. 697–704 (2014)

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Pereira, G., Brisson, A., Prada, R., Paiva, A., Bellotti, F., Kravcik, M., Klamma, R.: Serious games for personal and social learning & ethics: status and trends. Procedia Comput. Sci.15, 53–65 (2012)

Ravenet, B., Ochs, M., Pelachaud, C.: From a user-created corpus of virtual agent’s non-verbal behavior to a computational model of interpersonal attitudes. In: Aylett, R., Krenn, B., Pelachaud, C., Shimodaira, H. (eds.) IVA 2013. LNCS, vol. 8108, pp. 263–274. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)

Rouckhout, D., Schacht, R.: Ontwikkeling van een Nederlandstalig interpersoonlijk circumplex. Diagnostiekwijzer3, 96–118 (2000)

Traum, D.R., Swartout, W.R., Marsella, S.C., Gratch, J.: Fight, flight, or negotiate: believable strategies for conversing under crisis. In: Panayiotopoulos, T., Gratch, J., Aylett, R.S., Ballin, D., Olivier, P., Rist, T. (eds.) IVA 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3661, pp. 52–64. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

Wouters, P., van Oostendorp, H.: A meta-analytic review of the role of instructional support in game-based learning. Comput. Educ.60(1), 412–425 (2013)

Wouters, P., van der Spek, E.D., van Oostendorp, H.: Measuring learning in serious games: a case study with structural assessment. Educ. Technol. Res. Dev.59(6), 741–763 (2011)

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RELATED WORK

Bruijnes, M., Linssen, J.M., op den Akker, H.J.A., Theune, M., Wapperom, S., Broekema, C., & Heylen, D.K.J. (2015). Social Behaviour in Police Interviews: Relating Data to Theories. In Conflict and Multimodal Communication. Computational Social Sciences. Springer Verlag, London, pp. 317-347.

Linssen, J.M., & Theune, M. (2014). Meta-techniques for a Social Awareness Learning Game. In Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Games Based Learning (ECGBL 2014).

Linssen, J.M., de Groot, T.F., Theune, M., & Bruijnes, M. (2014). Beyond Simulations: Serious Games for Training Interpersonal Skills in Law Enforcement. In Proceedings of the 10th annual meeting of the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA 2014).

Linssen, J.M., Theune, M., & Heylen, D.K.J. (2014). Taking Things at Face Value: How Stance Informs Politeness of Virtual Agents. In Proceedings of the Computers as Social Actors Workshop (CASA 2013). pp. 71-82.

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USED MATERIAL

“Untitled” by Tuomas Puikkonen, https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkismus/5027781726/, cropped, CC BY 2.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/]

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