Investigating the Effects of Social Goals in a Negotiation Game with Virtual Humans

Educational games may be particularly suited to teaching social learning skills with virtual humans. We investigate the importance of social goals and engaging social interactions in learning from such games. In one experiment, students played a cultural negotiation game with an explicit social goal or only negotiation task goals. While the group without the explicit social goal learned significantly more, students who reported having social goals in a manipulation check learned the most. In future work, we will develop an intervention built into a virtual learning environment to implicitly scaffold social goals. Keywords. Virtual humans, motivation, educational games, social goals Motivation Simulation-based instructional systems are increasingly being used to facilitate learning social or interpersonal skills such as conflict resolution by simulating human behavior with virtual characters. These skills are currently taught through methods like roleplaying exercises and tutoring, both...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: AIED
• Authors: Amy Ogan, Vincent Aleven, Christopher Jones
• Keywords: AIED 2009, Artificial Intelligence, Explicit Social Goal, Social Goals, Virtual Humans