eprintid: 10076776 rev_number: 25 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/07/67/76 datestamp: 2019-06-26 11:57:38 lastmod: 2021-09-21 22:08:26 status_changed: 2019-06-27 10:14:07 type: proceedings_section metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Gauthier, A creators_name: Jenkinson, J title: Serious Game Facilitates Conceptual Change About Molecular Emergence Through Productive Negativity (RCT) ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B16 divisions: B14 divisions: J77 note: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. abstract: Throughout their undergraduate careers, biology students struggle to reconcile how randomness at the molecular level governs cellular systems, often misconceiving these emergent systems as mechanistic in nature. A serious game has potential to facilitate conceptual change by enabling instances of productive negativity—a player may attempt a challenge and fail under their current misconception, and then must reevaluate their understanding in order to succeed. We designed a serious game, MolWorlds, under this premise and tested its efficiency against an interactive simulation that used the same graphics and simulation system as the game but lacked gaming elements such as score, sequential levelling structure, resource management, and a 3rd-person character immersed in the environment. We tested first-, second-, and third-year biology students’ misconceptions at the beginning and end of the semester (n=526), a subset of whom played either the game (n=20) or control (n=20) for 30 minutes prior to the post-test. We performed a 3x3 repeated measures linear mixed model to determine how educational level (first-, second-, or third-year biology) and intervention type (no intervention, simulation, or game) affected students’ molecular misconceptions from pre-test to post-test. While educational level did not have an effect on misconceptions, the intervention type did (p<.001). A priori pairwise comparisons revealed that participants who were not exposed to any intervention retained significantly more misconceptions in comparison to those exposed to the interactive simulation (p=.007) as well as those exposed to the game (p<.001), while adjusting for educational level. A trending difference was found between the simulation group and the gaming group (p=.084), with gamers resolving more misconceptions. Analysis of gameplay data revealed that gamers experienced significantly more instances of productive negativity than control-users (p<.001) and that a trending relationship exists between the quality of productively negative events and lower post-test misconceptions (p=.066). date: 2016-10-06 date_type: published publisher: Academic Conferences and Publishing International official_url: https://www.academic-conferences.org/pdf/ oa_status: green full_text_type: other language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1666940 isbn_13: 9781911218098 lyricists_name: Gauthier, Andrea lyricists_id: AGAUT87 actors_name: Gauthier, Andrea actors_id: AGAUT87 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Games Based Learning place_of_pub: Paisley, Scotland event_title: European Conference on Games Based Learning (ECGBL 2016) event_location: The University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, Scotland event_dates: 06 October 2016 - 07 October 2016 institution: European Conference on Games Based Learning issn: 2049-100X book_title: Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Games Based Learning citation: Gauthier, A; Jenkinson, J; (2016) Serious Game Facilitates Conceptual Change About Molecular Emergence Through Productive Negativity (RCT). In: Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Games Based Learning. Academic Conferences and Publishing International: Paisley, Scotland. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10076776/1/Gauthier%2C%20Jenkinson%20-%202016%20-%20Serious%20Game%20Facilitates%20Conceptual%20Change%20About%20Molecular%20Emergence%20Through%20Productive%20Negativity%20%28RCT%29.pdf