Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
advance through a series of labeled levels (e.g., “Serious Bookworm,” “Expert
Strategizer,” “Ultimate Genius,”). Within the overarching metagame, students can
redeem points for various in-system rewards: creating a personalized avatar, chang-
ing environment attributes, or playing an educational mini-game. Every student has
a personal avatar to represent them within iSTART-ME, and students can spend
points to customize their avatar with different hair, glasses, shirts, etc. Students
may also choose to change the color scheme of iSTART-ME or to swap out the
animated tutor for an alternative version. Lastly, students can redeem points to
play an educational mini-game. A suite of short educational games (5-15 min
play time) were designed for specific use within iSTART-ME. All of the mini-
games incorporate similar features from existing games; however, the gameplay
incorporates the strategies from iSTART and requires students to identify strat-
egy use or generate self-explanations. Within these mini-games, students can earn
points, advance through levels, and engage in active gameplay (e.g., popping bal-
loons, building bridges, escaping a dungeon). Even though the points and levels
within the mini-games do not transfer over into the iSTART-ME system, the stu-
dents can still set high scores and compare performance among peers. All of these
features work in combination to serve as the game-based extended practice within
iSTART-ME.
MiBoard Game
In addition to the iSTART-ME adaptation of extended practice, there is also an
online Multiplayer interactive Board Game (MiBoard Game; Dempsey et al., 2009)
that gives students the chance to practice using the self-explanation strategies while
competing against and collaborating with each other in a constructivist gaming envi-
ronment. MiBoard is designed as an alternative form of extended practice within
iSTART-ME. So rather than self-explaining a text to earn points, students can log
into MiBoard Game and play a collaborative/competitive game with their peers.
MiBoard Game is designed so that three to four students can play and practice
together by creating self-explanations and identifying the strategies used by other
players. This is somewhat similar to the one-on-one peer practice from the group
version of SERT. In the MiBoard Game, each player takes a turn generating a self-
explanation for a provided sentence. Then all players try to identify what strategy or
strategies were used in that self-explanation. Players obtain points when a majority
of them agree on a specific strategy being used. If any players disagree on the strate-
gies used in the self-explanation, then a discussion chatroom is activated. During the
discussion, all players have the chance to provide a rationale for their original choice
and can accrue points by convincing other players to change their strategy selection.
After the discussion, all players get another opportunity to identify the strategies
they think were used within the self-explanation. After all voting is complete, the
players are brought back to the main board game screen. At this time the player who
originally generated the explanation gets to roll the virtual die, and his/her token is
automatically moved along the board. Then the next player will take a turn reading
