I wanted to take a minute to update my blog and copy over a post from my Action Research blog that updates where my research is currently at. Next week will complete my journey using Guild Wars to teach social skills. It hasn't exactly been what I expected, but then again when is any type of research exactly as you expect it to be? During this journey I created a website and forums (http://virtuguild.com/). I have been collecting data using pre & post surveys, weekly polls, forum discussions, as well as in game chat through the use of Ventrilo's voice communication program and in game text chat.
The first week was kind of a get to know the other participants in the group and a chance to get everyone setup with their Guild Wars character as well as familiarize them with the game interface and quests. I lost two participants during the first week because one felt she was too experienced with Guild Wars to be a part of the research and the male participant just vanished into thin air after answering all the first week challenges. That brought us down to six participants, although during the second week we had another male who asked to join us in the research and was more than happy to catch up to where we all were.
The second week began the quests and missions to play out the whole storyline of Guild Wars. These continued up until Wednesday of this week when we completed the last mission of the storyline. There are now five quests that will be completed to round out the storyline for everyone. Every week I setup topics to post on in the forums and a weekly poll with a question for the participants to answer. The hardest part has been to get everyone to answer the questions and polls in the forums. They are generally eager to participate in the game itself, but not much on the writing or answering of questions. They all did participate in the pre-survey I conducted before we began and I am hoping they will all answer the post-survey questions next week at the end of this project.
What has been a surprise with your results?
There have been some unexpected twists and turns along the way needless to say. Guild Wars only allows for 4 members to be in a party for most of the beginning quests and missions. This forced the group to be divided up in order to accommodate everyone, which made it more difficult for me to see all of the interaction that was going on in each group at all times.
The party size then moved up to 6 during week 3 and eventually to 8 members for weeks 4-6. During the first day of six members allowed in a party I divided the groups up by their profession/class in the game trying to make the parties more effective. This unfortunately backfired on my research in a way because it ended up being 4 guys in one party and 4 girls in the other party.
The reason I say it backfired is because there was more communication during the 2 quests and mission completed between the guys that day then there had been in the past 2 weeks. That was kind of a twist, although now that I think about it perhaps not completely unexpected that the guys would feel more comfortable communicating in Ventrilo and Guild Wars together than with the girls in the same group.
The following day I split the groups up half and half to see the differences in the interactions. It was somewhat better than before, but still did not work out as well as putting all the guys together. The following week when we began working as a complete group of 8 it became a lot more difficult in some aspects. I think this may have been due to the group size being too large for effective communication between all the members.
I also found it difficult to get members to volunteer to lead the quests/missions. Some were more eager than others, but I wanted everyone to have the opportunity in order to see the strengths/weaknesses of their leadership role and look for ways to improve upon it. The teamwork has become better as we have progressed from week to week, but I feel it was still better in the smaller groups than when we merged everyone together into the group of 8.
What tweaks are you making for your next cycle of research?
At this point I am somewhat at a loss as to what to do for my second cycle. The whole point was to see if using Guild Wars could lead to teaching effective social skills like leadership and teamwork that are needed in todays workforce. Yet I am seeing a pattern of the males being more comfortable working with other males instead of the females in the group and that the smaller groups actually work together more effectively than the larger groups do. This is quite the conundrum for me and leaves me somewhat baffled as to where I should go from here. Do I say it failed and try something else or should I perhaps try another approach? As I am drawing near the end of my first cycle these are questions that I am asking myself, so that I can prepare for my next cycle.
What is the overall participant’s response?
Since I am no quite to the end of my first cycle it is hard for me to get a definite picture of the overall response from my participants. However, from the lack of posts in the forums I would say that they prefer to communicate more orally than in written form. I feel that some of them tend to leave abruptly at the end of some of the missions/quests depending on who was the leader that night, especially if the participants died a lot and there wasn’t as much communication between members of the party. I will know more about their overall feelings towards the project once it comes to an end next week and I have looked at all the data from the surveys and polls.
