Abstract

Collaborative learning helps to construct a learning situation in which students solve problems together, and their learning effectiveness is promoted. However, collaborative learning often has the problem of unequal participation of learners. Therefore, this study combines the collaborative learning mode of the virtual environment of digital games and applies it to an elementary school art course, in the hope of solving the problems in collaborative learning. Using a quasi-experimental research design, students were divided into a virtual group and a real group to compare whether the different styles of collaborative learning would affect their learning. Participants in this study were 83 fourth-grade students from an elementary school. This study found that the learning effectiveness and motivation of the students in the virtual group were significantly higher than those of the students in the real group. The reason is that the virtual group learned in an active virtual environment in which the students’ shared solutions with their partners, and could even manipulate their virtual avatar to give peer guidance, triggering learning motivation to promote inter-group interaction. However, students in the real group were worried about making the classroom dirty, and had to invest more effort. They gave priority to their favorite specific colors, and completed the mixed-color questions independently, with less collaboration and communication, making it difficult for them to correctly answer the questions that their peers solved independently during the learning process. It is suggested that virtual avatars can be introduced in actual teaching to improve student interaction and attention.