Self-reflection in Games

My pre-dissertation project at UW–Madison

As a gamer and learning science researcher, I am particularly interested in how people learn in video games, specifically how people reflect on their in-game behaviors and adjust strategies. I designed a study to enable people to “think aloud” and use a structured reflection sheet to reveal their reflection processes while playing games.

Left: Self-reflection model Right: In-game self-reflection sheet

I used two games in this study. The first game was called Beats Empire (https://play.beatsempire.org/) that was an educational game for middle schoolers’ data literacy learning, and the second game was Slay the Spire (https://www.megacrit.com/) that was a popular turn-based card game. Both games were turn-based, which allowed players ample time to reflect, and required extensive strategizing and decision-making based on previous actions.

Left: Beats Empire gameplay Right: Slay the Spire gameplay

The research findings from this project have been presented in various conferences, including 2019 Inaugural Symposium on Computer Science and Learning Sciences (Zhao & Pellicone, 2019), ICQE 2019 (Zhao et al., 2019), AERA 2021 (Zhao & Berland, 2021), and AERA 2023 (Zhao, 2023).

References

2023

  1. Exploring structured self-reflection and expertise in a playful learning experience
    Yilang Zhao
    In Proceedings of the 2023 AERA Annual Meeting, 2023
    HTML

2021

  1. Exploring self-reflection in a playful learning experience
    Yilang Zhao, and Matthew Berland
    In Proceedings of the 2021 AERA Annual Meeting, 2021
    HTML

2019

  1. Proposing a rubric-based in-game self-reflection model
    Y Zhao, and A Pellicone
    In 2019 Inaugural Symposium on Computer Science and Learning Sciences, 2019
  2. Epistemic networks in playful assessment
    Y Zhao, V Kumar, and A Pellicone
    In International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography, 2019