Diretrizes de design para jogos educacionais multiplayer com foco na colaboração

Abstract

Multiplayer educational games have the potential to promote collaboration, debate, and knowledge sharing in more active and meaningful learning processes, as well as improve social and communication skills. However, most educational games found in educational resource repositories support only a single player. Therefore, the objective of this work is to propose a set of guidelines for the design of multiplayer educational games, focusing on collaboration, in order to assist in the development of games that can promote collaborative learning experiences. The following procedures and scientific methods were used in the research to consolidate this set of guidelines: (i) a systematic literature review, conducted to understand the state of the art of recommendations for multiplayer game design; (ii) a study on design recommendations for collaborative educational games, with the aim of deepening the analysis of recommendations focused on the design of multiplayer games that promote collaboration; (iii) an exploratory analysis of multiplayer educational games, with the objective of verifying whether the identified recommendations have been applied in the available educational games; (iv) an iterative process of designing and implementing a collaborative version of the game "Responda se Puder", allowing several cycles of refinement of the proposed set of guidelines; and (v) case studies in public schools, involving students and teachers from high school and lower secondary education, to validate the effectiveness of the guidelines, following four methods: direct observation of a game session at each educational level; evaluation using the EGameFlow (FU; SU; YU, 2009) with the participants; focus groups with student teams; and interviews with teachers who acted as moderators of the game sessions. The evaluation of the case study results indicated a good convergence among participants, confirming effective collaboration and satisfaction with the game, which initially confirms the feasibility and validity of the guidelines to support the development of multiplayer educational games that promote effective collaboration among students.