Leveraging collaborative work for game-based language learning

Hansen, Dirk [UCL] Arnett, Carlee Suner Munoz, Ferran [UCL]

Over the past few years, language teaching has progressively evolved from teacher generated classroom settings to more complex, learner generated learning scenarios, allowing learners to explore authentic contents, work collaboratively and create sophisticated and socially relevant products (Van den Branden, 2006). Although these processes are best suited to foster language learning, increase learner engagement and support the acquisition of competences such as critical thinking, democratic competence, etc., they also pose major challenges both to teachers and learners with regard to the interaction in collaborative work. Even if learners are presented with instructions in how to work collaboratively, the interaction in the group remains at a very basic level and leads thus to rote learning (King, 2007). Whereas the benefits of such learning scenarios in terms of motivation, engagement, etc., have been receiving much attention, previous research has neglected to provide efficient ways to properly manage classroom interaction and thus enhance the learning outcomes (Apple, 2006). Against this backdrop, the present paper aims to lay out the potential of so called cooperation scripts as a mean to leverage collaborative work and classroom interaction in complex learning scenarios. In fact, so called social cooperation scripts at the initial learning stages have been proven to be highly effective, since they provide learners with prompts that help to regulate social roles and actions in the group and thus promote meaningful learning (Weinberger et al., 2007, De la Fuente, 2015). However, language pedagogy research has been slow in accepting these findings. In order to fill this gap, an intervention study with a single factor experimental design was conducted with learners of German in the secondary school. A control group performed different tasks related to a game-based learning scenario which consisted in creating and playing a digital scavenger hunt; the experimental group performed the same game-based learning scenario, but used cooperation scripts to structure the interaction and the construction of shared knowledge that is required for collaborative work. Learning outcomes were tested by means of a language proficiency test before and after the treatment. In addition, learner’s task engagement was measured by using already validated testing instruments (Philp & Duchesne, 2016). In this context, task engagement was defined as a state of increased attention that is reflected in different dimensions of learner’s beliefs and task responsiveness (cf. Lambert et al. 2016). Overall, the results show that the use of cooperation scripts offers an intriguing venue for making collaborative work more efficient and pave the way for further research in this field.