The media equation: how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places
Redefining the learning companion: the past, present, and future of educational agents
Computers & Education
What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
Social learning through gaming
CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
AI Magazine - Special issue on achieving human-level AI through integrated systems and research
Mere belief in social action improves complex learning
ICLS'08 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on International conference for the learning sciences - Volume 2
Interactivity and expectation: eliciting learning oriented behavior with tutorial dialogue systems
INTERACT'05 Proceedings of the 2005 IFIP TC13 international conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Using tutors to improve educational games
AIED'11 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Artificial intelligence in education
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One innovative use of digital games is to facilitate learning skills with social components by simulating human behavior with virtual humans. We investigate learners' social goals to understand how they help learners learn intercultural skills from virtual humans in BiLAT, a virtual world that teaches cross-cultural negotiation. We hypothesize that students learn more when they approach the simulation as a social interaction rather than taking a trial-and-error approach perhaps characteristic of video gaming. In a randomized controlled experiment with 59 participants, we found that participants improved cross-cultural negotiation skills through game play. Our hypothesis that participants given an explicit social goal would learn more than those given task-related goals was not confirmed. We did, however, find a positive relation between students' self-reported social goals, regardless of condition, and their learning results. This relation was confirmed through analysis of log data. Although it is still an open question how best to promote students' approaching a simulation with a social orientation, the results underline the importance of such goals.