First Results from Using Game Refinement Measure and Learning Coefficient in Scrabble
This work addresses the design of educational games for language learners, but it is incremental as it applies existing game refinement concepts to Scrabble with new parameters.
The paper tackled the problem of optimizing Scrabble variants for entertainment and learning by proposing a learning coefficient measure and analyzing different board sizes and dictionary sizes, finding that a 13x13 board yields the best entertainment and a 15x15 board with 4% dictionary size is most effective for language learners.
This paper explores the entertainment experience and learning experience in Scrabble. It proposes a new measure from the educational point of view, which we call learning coefficient, based on the balance between the learner's skill and the challenge in Scrabble. Scrabble variants, generated using different size of board and dictionary, are analyzed with two measures of game refinement and learning coefficient. The results show that 13x13 Scrabble yields the best entertainment experience and 15x15 (standard) Scrabble with 4% of original dictionary size yields the most effective environment for language learners. Moreover, 15x15 Scrabble with 10% of original dictionary size has a good balance between entertainment and learning experience.