=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2730/paper23
|storemode=property
|title=The Big Five game of personality: a digital role-playing game to assess and train students on Big Five Theory
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2730/paper23.pdf
|volume=Vol-2730
|authors=Michela Ponticorvo,Fabrizio Ferrara,Marianna Mugione,Claudio Barbaranelli
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/psychobit/PonticorvoFMB20
}}
==The Big Five game of personality: a digital role-playing game to assess and train students on Big Five Theory==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2730/paper23.pdf
The Big Five Game of Personality: a Digital Role-Playing
Game to Assess and Train students on Big Five Theory
Michela Ponticorvo1, Fabrizio Ferrara2, Marianna Mugione3 and Claudio Barbara-
nelli4
1University of Naples Federico II, Department of Humanities, Natural and Artificial Cognition
Lab (NAC), 80133, Naples, Italy
2Smarted srl, Via Riviera di Chiaia 256, 80121 Napoli, Italy
3University of Naples Federico II, Department of Humanistic Studies, Naples, Italy
4 University of Rome Sapienza, Department of Psychology, 00185, Rome, Italy
michela.ponticorvo@unina.it
Abstract. The university institution has recently been making a great effort to
affirm the value of an open education accessible to everyone. An example of this
intention is the creation of Massive and Open Online Courses (MOOC) provided
for a wide audience. In the learning process with MOOCs, learning becomes a
dynamic process, within which it is possible to train both declarative and proce-
dural components.
This work is aimed to analyze the use of technology in the learning process.
Within a syllabus dedicated to students containing a large number of theoretical
lessons, a game concerning one of the lessons of the syllabus (the Big Five
Model) was created to test what is learned through the courses. The Big Five
Game of Personality has the structure of a role-playing game. The user has to
help a recruiter to interview some applicants by asking question appropriately to
the dimension of personality. Also, on the basis of the applicant’s answers, the
user has to evaluate the level of each dimension. The game experience is accom-
panied by a Tutor who introduces the next steps.
This article shows the specific structure of the game, opening up a space for the
potential use of technology in the academic field.
Keywords: Open Education, MOOC, Role playing Game, Tutoring Systems,
Training, Big Five, Students’ skills
1 Introduction
This paper introduces a software, available online and for any Android devices,
aimed at training and enhance university students’ skills and knowledge.
A detailed explanation of the software and of the user’s experience will follow in
the next paragraphs.
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2
1.1 Academic Education and MOOCs
The university institution went from an academic offer reserved for small groups to one
intended for a wider audience in order to train updated professionals operating in the
current knowledge society. A consequence of this change has been the great effort made
to affirm the institutional identity, with the enhancement of suitable didactic models, a
wider participation of students and a greater attention to the community as well as to
the current market of work.
Open Education represents a reality characterized by political, institutional, peda-
gogical and philosophical purposes aimed to greater access to education. The concept
of "openness" comes from an idea according to which university education must be
seen as a part of the global project of continuous education for all and must help inte-
grate all the other levels and forms of education into this project [17].
The phenomenon of MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) is so described consid-
ering the broader contexts of the Open Education, online learning and the currently
changes in academic education’s domain in a time of globalization and limited eco-
nomic resources [19]. MOOCs are open courses that can be described as a form of
distance learning [2]. The contents are available online by digital platforms through
video lessons and written submissions. MOOC courses are often provided by universi-
ties, but designed for a large and heterogeneous user audience. At the basis of this type
of learning there is the idea according to which knowledge is not a static and individual
skill but comes to life through relationships between people and information nodes:
learning takes place thanks to the interactions that connect networks of people and re-
sources [15]. In learning processes with MOOCs, metacognition, planning and self-
regulation are central skills: students, through MOOCs, can explore knowledge with
virtual laboratories and live experiences in shared communication spaces [5].
Based on that, learning is a complex process within which both the theoretical/de-
clarative and experiential/procedural components contribute. Then, the declaratory
learning (supported by lessons and didactical materials with a linguistic approach),
should harmonize with a procedural learning that refers to experience and laboratorial
activities.
In this work, procedural learning is explored through the use of technologies and
digital devices. This contribution attempts to explore the potential of using technology
associated with MOOCs. Within a syllabus dedicated to students containing a large
number of lessons, the project covered the topic related to the Big-Five Model. It rep-
resents a shared frame of reference for the evaluation of the personality. It was con-
ceived by Tupes and Christal in 1961 [16], and developed only over the years 80/90 by
various authors [6,8,10,12]. The Big-Five Questionnaire [4] is a scientifically based
classification and description system. As the name implies, the model identifies five
fundamental dimensions for the description and assessment of personality: Extrover-
sion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Open.
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2 Big Five Game
The Big Five Game of Personality has the structure of a role-playing game where stu-
dents can test and train their knowledge about the Big Five Theory through a scenario
that simulates reality, in order to improve their skills and competences for both aca-
demic and working aims.
It is widely recognized that role playing is a powerful training tool, as it allows to
obtain positive results in both training and learning practices, facilitating knowledge
and promoting personal skills [14,16].
The concept of "role playing", introduced by Moreno in 1946 [13], describes activi-
ties in which two or more people play a part in a hypothetical situation [3] and are
involved in an imaginative-creative process to try to solve it [1].
In recent years the development of new technologies applied to artificial intelligence
have contributed to the use of role-playing in digital contexts. Role-playing games, ap-
plied to e-learning environments, allow the user to live an interactive experience [20],
but also a reflective one [21]. For this reason, these simulation training systems based
on digital role play are increasingly adopted tools, especially for the development of
transversal skills [7].
The environment in which the game is set is an HR-Recruitment office. Here, the
user has to help the recruiter of a multi-national society to interview some applicants
for a job position. User’s work and aim is introduced by a Tutor that follows the user
step-by-step, giving feedbacks to orientate his choices all the interviews long.
The homepage offers the possibility to take a look to the five dimensions of the Big
Five Theory before starting the game by clicking the info button: here, the Tutor ex-
plains each dimension according to the student’s choice.
When the Game starts the Tutor introduces himself, the recruiter and the aim of the
interview. In the following step the user can choose which applicant he wants to inter-
view. Applicants and their features are showed by labels. Once the applicant is chosen,
the Tutor suggests the recruiter which dimension of personality he have to focus on.
The user has to complete four interactions choosing, among three questions to do to
the applicant, the most representative of the interview’s construct object (Figure 1).
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4
Figure 1. The figure shows the figure shows the alternatives among which the user has to choose
appropriately, according to the construct considered (in this case the dimension was Extrover-
sion).
Each question is followed by an answer of the applicant according to his personality
features (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The figure shows the question chosen by the user previously and the answer of the
applicant, according to his personality features (in this case the dimension was Extroversion).
5
For the selection of the questions asked by the avatar controlled by the user to the bot,
the authors used the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) [10] which is public-
domain personality measures translated from English into more than 25 other languages
[11]. The authors used a table1 developed using IPIP items and their associated trait
labels. In this table, there is a relation between a statement, the IPIP item, and the con-
struct using Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of scale on which the item is scored.
We selected the statements for each personality trait, and we generated the script of
both avatars. The statements that correlate positively with a trait were used for the cor-
rect questions and answers and the statements that correlate negatively where used for
the incorrect questions. We added neutral questions with sentences that are external to
this framework. After the generation of the script, we performed an expert review with
for a speech harmonization.
At the end of the interactions of each dimension, the Tutor provides feedbacks about
user’s questions to evaluate their accuracy, giving the user the opportunity to think
about his answers (Figure 3). Than the Tutor asks the user to evaluate the level of the
personality dimension of the applicant formulating another feedback according to the
evaluation before introducing the next dimension. The interaction’s structure is the
same for each personality dimension and for each applicant interviewed.
At the end of the interview of each applicant the Tutor asks the user to give a general
description of the interviewed applicant’s personality and gives a feedback on the user’s
answer. Then the game restart and the user has the possibility to choose another appli-
cant. This screen also allows the user to take a look to the statistics, by clicking on the
stats button.
The game is playable online from any device2 and it is downloadable as an App on
Android devices too3.
1 https://ipip.ori.org/TedoneItemAssignmentTable.xlsx
2 https://ssg-static.quing.biz/PersonalityGame/
3 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.smarted.b5g
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Figure 3. The figure shows the feedback given by the Tutor at the end of the interaction between
the recruiter and the applicant.
3 Conclusions and future directions
The Big Five Personality Game is a serious game thought to train and improve student’s
knowledge and skills supporting a theoretical learning with a laboratorial and digital
one in order to remark the experiential side of learning. This feature has the asset to
bring the user in the taking of consciousness of his capabilities and skills. This is also
possible thanks to a tutoring system that make knowledge an always flexible and dy-
namic process.
This paper shows the structure of the game and focuses on its potential application
in the academic field. One of the main future directions is to conduct empirical studies
to test the validity and reliability of the tool in order to explore new learning horizons.
At the same time, it would be interesting to analyze students' data by comparing aca-
demic results in both conditions of presence and absence of the serious game in a
MOOC in order to understand how much the presence of the serious game can influence
and potentially improve learning methods.
Finally, it would be highly desirable to extend the field of application of the game to
other contexts and topics of study, so as to obtain further data to study and analyze the
strengths and weaknesses of the game.
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4 Acknowledgment
The Big Five Game project has been carried out by the University of Naples “Federico
II” with its E-Learning platform Federica WebLearning4 and by Smarted s.r.l.
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