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Prior research has shown that digital games can enhance STEM education by providing learners with immersive and authentic scientific experiences. However, optimizing the learning outcomes of students engaged in game-based environments requires aligning the game design with diverse student needs. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of player behavior is crucial for identifying students who need additional support or modifications to the game design. This study applies an Ordered Network Analysis (ONA)—a specific kind of Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA)—to examine the game trace log data of student interactions, to gain insights into how learning gains relate to the different ways that students move through an open-ended virtual world for learning microbiology. Our findings reveal that differences between students with high and low learning gains are mediated by their prior knowledge. Specifically, level of prior knowledge is related to behaviors that resemble wheel-spinning, which warrant the development of future interventions. Results also have implications for discovery with modeling approaches and for enhancing in-game support for learners and improving game design.
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Recognizing Multi-Party Epistemic Dialogue Acts During Collaborative Game-Based Learning Using Large Language Models
Abstract Understanding students’ multi-party epistemic and topic based-dialogue contributions, or how students present knowledge in group-based chat interactions during collaborative game-based learning, offers valuable insights into group dynamics and learning processes. However, manually annotating these contributions is labor-intensive and challenging. To address this, we develop an automated method for recognizing dialogue acts from text chat data of small groups of middle school students interacting in a collaborative game-based learning environment. Our approach utilizes dual contrastive learning and label-aware data augmentation to fine-tune large language models’ underlying embedding representations within a supervised learning framework for epistemic and topic-based dialogue act classification. Results show that our method achieves a performance improvement of 4% to 8% over baseline methods in two key classification scenarios. These findings highlight the potential for automated dialogue act recognition to support understanding of how meaning-making occurs by focusing on the development and evolution of knowledge in group discourse, ultimately providing teachers with actionable insights to better support student learning.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2112635
- PAR ID:
- 10555091
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education
- Volume:
- 35
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1560-4292
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 677-701
- Size(s):
- p. 677-701
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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