How Learners of Different Learning Styles Collaborate in a Mobile-Assisted Chinese Character Game Based on Flexible Grouping

Abstract

To assist young learners of Chinese Language in developing general orthographic awareness (i.e., the knowledge of Chinese character structures), a novel mobile game-based learning intervention was designed. In playing the “Chinese-PP” game in a 1:1 (one-deviceper-pupil) setting, each of the 31 participating 9-year-old pupils was assigned a Chinese character component in her smartphone. A pupil may make use of her own and peers’ character components to form a legitimate Chinese character, and invite the peers with matching components to join her group, resulting in rapid social negotiation. In this paper, the students’ collaborative learning processes in three game sessions are analyzed. The relationships between pupils with varied learning styles and their game behaviors and learning gains are unveiled. Through the intervention that stimulates active peer coaching and social learning, we discover that all the pupils (regardless of their learning styles) became active learning participants and achieved high learning gains towards the last game session.