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Impacts of SGM and MGM on students’ game-playing and collaborative patterns
A finer-grained analysis of the intra- and inter-group interactions has shed light on the varied game playing patterns
of the students in playing SGM and MGM. During the game rounds in the MGM, the students were more motivated
to trial composing alternative characters. They would not mind composing either a simple or complex character to
start with and the time they spent in working out and submitting their first characters tended to be shorter.
Conversely, during the SGM, the students were more inclined to deliberately compose the most complex Chinese
character possible in one shot, and then gave up exploring other possibilities in composing alternative characters with
their own components. In this regard, they often took more time to form their first characters. Even though the game
mechanism of the SGM mode does allow them to disband their submitted group if they change their mind, they were
generally not keen to do so but tended to stick to their first (and only) formed characters throughout the game round.
It was observed that there were more discussions but fewer characters were formed and submitted.
We discovered several emergent game patterns (or strategies) that were specific to either game mode. For example,
during the SGM games, the students often delayed their decision or commitment in joining one group that they were
invited so they could spend more time exploring other possibilities of forming more complex characters and earn
higher scores. During the MGM games, members of a particular confirmed group might proceed to explore more
character forming opportunities with one or a combination of the strategies as shown in Table 1, as every additional
eligible group that a student joined would bring her more scores. In fact, we did not directly teach them these
strategies. Instead, they figured these out by themselves, perhaps as part of their socio-constructivist process of
internalizing the Chinese character knowledge learned from their teacher. Thus, this strategy table is not definitive or
exhaustive. More emergent strategies may emerge as we facilitate more game sessions and analyze the game process
data in the future. Based on our current data, we characterize the first four strategies as basic ones. The last two are
derived from the basic strategies, which often involved more sophisticated student-student interactions.
Table 1. Student strategies for figuring out alternative characters during Chinese-PP games
Strategy Label Description Example
Expansion To add new component(s) owned by non-group
member(s) in order to form a more complex character
旦 → 担
Reduction To remove one or more components in order to form a
simpler character
警 → 苟
Replacement To replace one or more components of the group
character in order to form another group with another
similar character
借 → 错
Reshuffling To reuse all the components in a character but alter 叶 → 古 (the reshuffling of the two
their positions to form a new character
components: 口 and 十)
胃 → 胡(the reshuffling of the three
components: 口,十 and 月)
Splitting To split a character into multiple components or Splitting 堆 into components 土 and
component sets, each forming new characters with
other component(s) respectively
佳, and form 推 and 垃 respectively
(i.e., double replacements)
Reassembling To take one or more components from at least two Taking扌 from 拉, 土 from 里, and 寸
characters and form a new character
from 讨; and form 持
We observed a sequence of component manipulations in each MGM game round. During the first three Chinese-PP
sessions, the students tended to be content in figuring out simple two- or three-component characters, and
occasionally moving on to the possibility of replacing or adding one component to form another character. However,
as they were gradually developing the skills of composing the most complex character possible in one shot during
the SGM game rounds, they transferred this strategy to the MGM game rounds in the last three Chinese-PP sessions.
They then extended it into a “top-down,” character reduction approach. In the process, they might have also picked
up the meta-skills of generalization, i.e., they needed to generalize their emergent strategies from instances of
successful character composing and re-composing in earlier rounds, thereby re-use such strategies in the future game
rounds.
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