U-Forest: Collaborative Problem-solving

Orlando Guerrero | Feb 10, 2024 min read

U-Forest is a collaborative game designed and implemented in the context of a Computer Science Master’s degree. The complete project, with the lead of Matias Rojas Phd., aimed to develop tools that could meassure and develop collaborative problem-solving(CPS) skills in elementary school students. My role was to manage a game design process that could achieve game-based learning for CPS skills. For that, I also had to inform the qualitative assessment of the experiment after its implementation.

The result was the collaboration in three peer-reviewed papers. The first addressed the complete experience with a tool that measured the CPS skills of students before and after the game experience. The second paper described how UForest used collaborative game scripts and group regulation concepts to achieve collaborative problem solving. The third described the use of the automated tool developed by Cristian Sáez to deliver feedback to students during the task.

  1. Rojas, M., Nussbaum, M., Chiuminatto, P., Guerrero, O., Greiff, S., Krieger, F., Van Der Westhuizen, L. Assessing collaborative problem-solving skills among elementary school students, Computers & Education (2021) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104313.

  2. Rojas, M., Nussbaum, M., Guerrero, O. et al. Integrating a collaboration script and group awareness to support group regulation and emotions towards collaborative problem solving. Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn 17, 135–168 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-022-09362-0

  3. Rojas, M., Sáez, C., Baier, J. et al. Using Automated Planning to Provide Feedback during Collaborative Problem-Solving. Int J Artif Intell Educ 33, 1057–1091 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-022-00321-2