Perceived Sociability and Social Presence in a Collaborative Serious Game

A Game As A Sociable Cscl Environment

Multiplayer games have become increasingly popular in recent years (Steinkuehler, 2006; Kallio, Mäyrä, & Kaipainen, 2011; Yee, 2007). Previous studies have shown that collaborative serious games have the potential to support high-level knowledge construction (e.g., Burton & Martin, 2010; Hummel et al., 2010; Hämäläinen & Oksanen, 2012; Bluemink, Hämäläinen, Manninen, & Järvelä, 2010). In addition, it is generally agreed that the development of games permits ever more diverse ways of designing learning for the future. Two such examples are the demonstration of dangerous situations on construction sites (Hämäläinen, Oksanen & Häkkinen, 2008) and the promotion of global empathy and interest in learning (Bachen, Hernández-Ramos & Raphael, 2012). Thus, there is a growing interest in applying collaborative games to support different types of learning goals (e.g. Silseth, 2012; Whitton, 2010).