Understanding when anger becomes productive or destructive in collaborative educational games

Abstract In collaborative learning game environments where competition and collaboration coexist, conflicts among students are not uncommon. While conflicts of ideas and opinions are prevalent during collaborative learning, they are often perceived as elements to be avoided. One of the main concerns about conflict is its ability to trigger negative emotions, such as anger, which can compromise effective peer interaction, collaborative learning, and, in turn, diminish the quality of group discussions. However, this raises the question of whether anger always negatively affects collaborative learning. Most studies on negative emotions are related to test anxiety or boredom, while the impacts of emotions such as anger on learning are less explored. Especially within computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), there is limited research on how anger impacts students’ collaborative activities and learning. To address these issues, this paper aims to explore the potential relationship between anger and its impact on students’ collaborative discourse in a hybrid game-based simulation. Our findings suggest that anger has the potential to facilitate diverse and productive collaborative discussions. Students, driven by their anger, delved deeper into game mechanics, linked concepts to real-life situations, and employed various forms of logical reasoning to substantiate their opinions. However, the moment a student exhibited “tilting“ behavior, the quality of their collaborative discussions plummeted. Our findings provide important preliminary insights into the concept of “tilting” within immersive collaborative learning games and how it may manifest; they also offer guidance on the timing for educators’ intervention in collaborative discourse when anger arises among students.