Audience Involvement and Agency in Digital Games: Effects on Learning, Game Experience, and Social Presence

One of the most popular audiences of museums is classroom-size groups of students, in the context of school field trips. However, students do not get adequate involvement during interactive group experiences, which might affect their impression and learning gained from the visit. In this paper, we present our findings from a recent study in middle schools, where 507 students were engaged with their class in a learning game about olive oil production. We had two players directly control the game and varied the level of involvement of the audience (the rest of the class), using iPads. We found that higher involvement in the game afforded greater retention of information after two days, while there was no difference after one day. Also, students with direct agency in the game revealed greater learning gains than the audience members. Results about the impact of socioeconomic status and social interactions on learning are reported, along with the most important design implications.