Assessing Social Engagement in a Digital Role-Playing Game

Abstract

Classcraft is a digital role-playing game dedicated to classroom management. Teachers can create teams and assign an avatar to students, as well as points and ‘powers’ as rewards for desired behaviour. We conducted a study in 4 classrooms from Switzerland. The study aimed at assessing to what extent the game fosters the social component of students’ engagement. The detection of socially-engaged behaviours is based on the monitoring of players’ behaviours. We collected and analysed players’ digital traces with kTBS4LA, a platform dedicated to playing analytics. The data collected shows that social engagement varies across time or gender. This variation seems to be linked to specific features of the game and also depends on how the game is played.