Teaching responsible conduct of research is notoriously difficult in part because
ethical research behavior is driven by both cognitive and socio-affective learning outcomes.
Cognitive learning outcomes can include conceptual knowledge
about “what should I do?” or skills about “how should I do it?”
Socio-affective learning outcomes involve values and attitudes that inform “why should I care?”
Existing RCR training has demonstrated efficacy for teaching cognitive learning outcomes.
However, RCR experts advise that much more emphasis
should be placed on helping students develop strong positive attitudes about the importance
of RCR training and ethical research behavior.
variety of passive and active learning activities to address each of these learning outcomes,
which most often includes lectures, case study discussion or live-action role play.
Live-action role-play has emerged as one of the most promising discussion methods for improving
comprehension and execution of ethical behavior. Unfortunately, live-action role-play activities
are resource-intensive and therefore not a particularly convenient training method.
In the face of limited resources, institutions also rely heavily upon web-based RCR training,
which involves self-administered reading exercises and multiple-choice quizzes.
However, RCR experts have expressed concern over the efficacy of current web-based training tools
for teaching RCR learning outcomes. Much work has shown that single-player
role-playing video games can improve students’ attitudes about various ethical topics.
For these reasons, we developed Academical, an online choice-based interactive narrative
role-playing game for teaching RCR. In this game, players are challenged
to navigate a variety of realistic ethical dilemmas common to research.
Each story is specifically designed to allow the player to both explore a variety of good and bad
endings from multiple characters’ perspectives. The stories generally emphasize how power dynamics
and marginalized identities can complicate the execution of ethical research practices.
In a prior study, we showed that Academical was more engaging than traditional web-based RCR
training and generally better at teaching conceptual knowledge and moral reasoning skills.
For this Late-Breaking Work, we conducted a quasi-experimental correlational study
to determine if Academical is also effective at improving undergraduate
students’ attitudes about RCR training. Additionally, since engagement is
well-known to predict academic performance, we expected that participants’ post-game attitudes
would be correlated with their feelings of engagement with the game.
We found that participants on average significantly increased their agreement with each
of the six items on the RCR attitudes survey after playing a single, short session of Academical.
These results demonstrate the potential for Academical to help students develop
more positive attitudes about the importance of RCR training.
We then compared the participants’ pre- and post-game overall attitude scores with
their game engagement scores. Supporting our prediction,
we found that engagement was moderately correlated with post-game attitude scores.
These results indicate that participants’ RCR attitudes
changed to more closely align with their feelings of engagement with the game.
This study provides initial evidence supporting the efficacy for Academical to improve
students’ attitudes about RCR training. Combined with our previous work showing
Academical’s advantages over traditional web-based RCR training for teaching cognitive
learning outcomes, this study’s results show that Academical is capable of improving both cognitive
and socio-affective learning outcomes simultaneously.
For context, this is an achievement that has not yet been empirically demonstrated
for traditional web-based RCR training tools. This work contributes to the breadth of
evidence supporting the efficacy of interactive choice-based narrative games for training ethics.
Altogether, we conclude that Academical is a promising
online training tool for supplementing RCR education.