Abstract:

Games have been used in the traditional classroom during the last years to enhance the active learning processes and active problem solving (Soller, Martinez, Jermann, & Muehlenbrock, 1998) within the finance courses participants. Game Based Learning (GBL) in the finance course has been of great efficacy to practice the concepts and procedures learnt during the course. The introduction of the ICTs, and specially the use of the course websites based in the Learning Management System Moodle have expanded the learning space, allowing to combine the best of the face to face learning with the distance learning activities. We called this combination as mix learning or blended learning. In the finance blended learning course developed for the Executive Education courses, one of the main objectives of the design has been to maintain or increase the quality of the face to face learning experience.

With this objective, the finance blended learning course designed includes 29 didactical units that have been classified as theoretical, practical and games. These different units are combined to create the best rhythm in the learning experience. One of these games is a Collaborative Game aiming to reach the highest level of engagement, interdependency and learning performances. The game invites the students, in individual and collaborative settings, to classify the items appearing on the screen in assets or liabilities in the balance. The added value of the collaborative setting is the interdependency created within the teammates playing together and the explicitation of the Feeling of Knowledge (FOK, Hart, 1965; Nelson & Narens, 1990) during the game, for facilitating the students' understanding of their teammates' knowledge, or Knowledge Group Awareness (KGA). The FOK are judgments of learning that occur while and after acquiring of knowledge; at the time of retrieval, metacognitive processes such as tip-of-the-tongue judgments and FOK judgments are made. In the finance game, FOK is explicated by a mark used to identify the level of certainty of the student when classifying their answers. Killi (2010) considers this representation of the FOK under the term representation of certainty. Killi considers the representation of a certainty as a game design pattern that “can be used to point out the certainty of knowledge. Certainty is based on the beliefs of the character and it is not determined based on facts”. The study of the impact of the FOK explicitation in the balance game will be analyzed to characterize its influence in the collaborative game performance.

References:
[1] Hart, J.T. (1965). Memory and the feeling-of-knowing experience. Journal of Educational Psychology, 56, 4, p. 208-216.
Kiili, K. (2010). Representation of Certainty. In Educational Games Design Patterns website. Available on http://www.pori.tut.fi/~krikii/patterns/
[2] Nelson, T. O., & Narens, L. (1990). Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings. In G. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 26, pp. 125-141). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
[3] Soller, A., Martinez, A., Jermann, P., and Muehlenbrock, M. (2005). From Mirroring to Guiding: A Review of State of the Art Technology for Supporting Collaborative Learning. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 15, 261-290.

Keywords:

Serious games, finance, blended learning, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Knowledge Group Awareness, Feeling of Knowledge.