The impacts of real competition and virtual competition in digital game-based learning

Competition is often incorporated into game-based learning. Accordingly, we developed an academic English competition cloze test (AECCG), in which there were two modes, i.e., real competition and virtual competition. On the other hand, the effectiveness of real competition and virtual competition is still uncertain. To this end, we conducted two empirical studies to address this issue. Study One examined the impacts of real competition while Study Two investigated students’ reactions to real competition and virtual competition. The results from Study One indicated that students made improvement between each task and between the post-test and the delayed test in the context of real competition. The results from Study Two showed that learners with virtual competition significantly had better learning performance and spent more time for undertaking the practical tasks than those with real competition. Furthermore, learners with real competition and those with virtual competition showed different learning behavior. Based on the results of these two studies, we proposed a framework, which can contribute the understandings of the impacts of real competition and virtual competition on game-based learning. Implications for educational practice are discussed.