Designing and Analyzing Social Dynamics for Sustainable Educational Development

Abstract

This chapter details the basic design of the social processes involved in the five-level negotiation game “Surfing Global Change” (SGC). Through its communicational design, this web-based game elicits characteristic collaborative behavior in student groups, which is then statistically analyzed by using several sets of university students. The architecture of SGC has already been explained in other articles and gives a framework for “game-based learning” along five interactive game levels. The web-based arena of interaction induces student collaboration; the quality of which is assessed here. The statistical analyses suggest that the SGC game rules didactically enhance anticipated processes of social self-organization. Motivation for a good grade (function of collected rewards) in this sense impacts team size, attitude towards work, and individual affinity for sticking to personal convictions. The rules trigger two distinct processes: social dynamics in the class and the striving for course grades; these targets do not necessarily match.