Game-theoretic approach to group learning enhancement through peer-to-peer explanation and competition

Learners may not be motivated to actively participate in the stages of learning. This paper aims to motivate learners to get effectively involved in the learning process, i.e., they learn both directly from an instructor and by learning from and teaching each other in an interactive manner. Hence, we introduce a game with a purpose that motivates learners to become involved in the learning process to effectively improve their learning performance. In order to meet the mentioned objective, this paper proposes a game-theoretic approach based on explanation and competition, which uses competitive learning and explanatory techniques. In this game, the learners are encouraged to compete for more beneficial explanations of educational concepts. We also use rewards and punishments as a means of encouraging learners to provide efficient explanations. We then apply game theoretic concepts to analyze the defined parameters in the proposed game for a Nash equilibrium that leads learners to have stronger motivations for providing good explanations. The statistical analysis of experimental results using the Student's t-test indicates that the proposed game drives the learners to participate actively in different learning stages and helps them to improve their knowledge more efficiently.