Examining the effects of a digital racial microaggression game and during-learning processes on students’ racial attitudes

Context: The broader education community has urgently called for increased antiracism education research to help address racial issues, such as problematic attitudes and microaggressions imbedded within Predominately White Institutions (PWI) of higher education. Currently, there is limited research utilizing racial bias interventions for higher education STEMM audiences and those studies that have are often limited to group workshops, small samples, and pre/post survey designs. Furthermore, most studies on racial attitudes have assessed limited cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitudes, suggesting a need for empirical studies that examine the effects of interventions across a wider range of attitudes. Using a mixed-method experimental design, I examined how a solo-player, online, gamified racial bias intervention designed for STEMM audiences affected the cognitive, affective, and behavioral racial attitudes and during-learning processes of students at a PWI. Specifically I asked: (1) What are the effects of a digital game-based racial microaggression intervention on students’ racial attitudes? (2) Are the effects of the intervention affected by during-learning behaviors and emotions? Design/Methods: I conducted a randomized experiment with 609 undergraduate students that were stratified by race and gender. Students completed a pre/post survey with multiple cognitive, affective, and behavioral racial attitude measures, and engaged in a think-emote aloud while being screen recorded playing a 45 to 60-minute online, gamified, racial bias intervention called Fair Play. I used the previous coding schemes from a pilot study and conducted path analyses to examine the effects of the Fair Play intervention and during-learning processes across 23 cognitive, affective, and behavioral racial attitudes. Results: Results revealed nine small to large statistically significant effects of Fair Play across students’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral racial attitudes. More specifically, students became more confused about types of microaggressions, perceived some aspects of the racial climate more and less positively, and their intentions to behave as a racial ally changed. Additional path analyses also revealed students’ self-regulatory processes during Fair Play had small to moderate suppressor and enhancement effects on students’ racial attitudes. Findings from this study provide evidence that despite students having poor self-regulatory learning and coping strategies, a single session of an immersive, gamified racial bias intervention has immediate positive and negative effects on different aspects of students' racial attitudes. Conclusion: Fair Play is a solo-player, online, gamified racial bias intervention that provides an engaging, novel, low-cost, and low-stakes environment to teach students about the sensitive topic of racial bias. Our studies provide empirical evidence that playing Fair Play has small to large effects on cognitive, affective, and behavioral racial attitudes but is more likely to affect students’ perceptions of the racial climate and racially-motivated behaviors than other attitudes. Triangulating the pre/post survey results with during-learning process data has also provided evidence to better understand the role of the learning process in supporting racial attitude changes with a serious game. Insights from the studies provide a better understanding of how self-regulated learning theories apply to the learning and teaching of racialized topics within a digital learning environment and can help support the development of more effective racial bias interventions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Kunze, Andrea J

Contributors dc:contributor

• Cromley, Jennifer G
• Hopson, Rodney
• Lane, H C
• Stern, Chadly
• Seals, Christopher

• racial attitudes
• intervention
• serious games
• during-learning processes
• experiment
• self-regulated learning

Statement dc:rights

• © 2022 Andrea J. Kunze

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116218

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116218