A Game-Based Approach to Support Social Presence and Awareness in Distributed Project-Based Learning

An important factor for success in project-based learning (PBL) is that the involved project groups establish an atmosphere of social interaction in their working environment. In PBL-scenarios situated in distributed environments, most of a group's work-processes are mediated through the use of production-focused tools that are unconcerned with the important informal and social aspects of a project. On the other hand, there are plenty of tools and platforms that focus on doing the opposite and mainly support informal bonding (e.g., Facebook), but these types of environments can be obtrusive and contain distractions that can be detrimental to a group's productivity and are thus often excluded from working environments. The aim of this paper is to examine how a game-based multi-user environment (MUVE) can be designed to support project-based learning by bridging the gap between productivity-focused and social software. To explore this, the authors developed a game-based MUVE which was evaluated in a PBL-scenario. The result of the study revealed several crucial design elements that are needed to make such a MUVE work effectively, and that the acceptance towards game-based MUVEs is high, even with a rudimentary execution.