To interrupt or not to interrupt : A comparison between in-game and post-game debriefing in a serious game

Sammanfattning

The military has a long history of using serious games and debriefing methods to enhance strategic and decision-making skills. Debriefing could be implemented as either in-game or post-game. However, while post-game debriefing is considered a well-established method to ensure learning, the research on implications of in-game debriefing is scarce. This study investigated whether in-game debriefing or post-game debriefing would add to better learning when playing a turn-based naval wargame. It also investigated if in-game debriefing is too disruptive of the experience to be a valuable method to use. The participants in this study played a digital serious game called DiMUNI-KASS, which, with further development, has future aims to train cadets at the Swedish Naval Warfare Center (SSS) in strategic thinking and decision-making. The study was conducted as a between-groups experiment where the participants played the game three times and on the first two games received either in-game debriefing, between every turn, or post-game debriefing, after each game. The last game was the evaluation game. Because of low participation number (N=12), there were no statistically significant results regarding performance evaluation. However, the results showed that the participants receiving in-game debriefing all won the evaluation game, whereas only half of the participants receiving post-game debriefing won the evaluation game. The in-game group also had more resources in the form of units and health points left. The self-assessment of knowledge gained by playing the game was the same in both groups. Interviews showed that the participants found the in-game debriefing to be somewhat disruptive of the gaming experience, but that the benefits of reflection outweighed the drawbacks. They also found the reflection unnecessary and annoying when nothing noteworthy had happened in the game. The conclusion is that in-game debriefing indicates to be adding to better learning than post-game debriefing. However, the in-game debriefing should only be triggered when needed, to avoid causing unnecessary interruptions and annoyance.