Individual and collaborative Performance and Level of Certainty in MetaVals

Abstract

In the context of Higher Education (HE) in general, and management education in particular, the use of Serious Games (SG) is spreading, and solutions are increasingly developing. Nevertheless, the implementation of this learning methodology deserves further study, in particular concerning pedagogical and psychological aspects such game performance and players’ metacognitive processes. This paper aims to study the relation among these two variables, based on the review of the results of MetaVals SG during the last 3 years. MetaVals is a collaborative, computer-based SG designed to facilitate collaboration and metacognitive awareness among HE students. It has been played by 250 students in 16 different experiences since its first version, in 2011. Overall results show a higher performance for collaborative than individual phases of the game, furthermore, students’ elicitation of their Level of Certainty (LC), although not significantly, could be related to a better performance. These results can be a basis for further studies focused on the implementation of collaborative GBL in formal and informal adult learning contexts. However, some challenges are also identified and discussed on the present version of MetaVals game, and solutions are proposed in order to continue with the design of SGs for wider application and learners’ needs in the current contexts.