Effects of solo vs. collaborative play in a digital learning game on geometry: Results from a K12 experiment

Digital games for learning are one of the most prominent examples of the use of technologies in the classroom, where numerous studies have presented promising results among children and adolescents. However, scarce evidence exists regarding different ways of implementing games within the classroom and how those affect students' learning and behaviors. In this study we explore the effect that collaboration can have in digital gameplay in a K12 context. More specifically, we have designed a 2 x 2 experimental study in which high school first year students participated in solo or collaborative gameplay in pairs, solving puzzles of diverse difficulty, using Shadowspect, a digital game on geometry. Our main results, computed by applying learning analytics on the trace data results, suggest that students playing solo had higher in-game engagement and solved more puzzles, while students collaborating were less linear in their pathways, skipping more tutorial levels and were more exploratory with Shadowspect features. These significant differences that we observe in solo and collaborative gameplay call for more experimentation around the effect of having K12 students collaborate on digital tasks, so that teachers can take better decisions about how to implement these practices in the classrooms of the future.