Collegiate eSports as Learning Ecologies: Investigating Collaborative Learning and Cognition During Competitions

Abstract

We explore the ways that a collegiate esports team’s play and performance evidences micro-level shifts in learning, domain mastery and expertise through simultaneously collaborative and competitive game play. Specifically, to this aim, we evaluate how esports provide evidence of processes and practices that are important for learning-relevant trajectories in and beyond higher education. Collegiate players demonstrate decision-making, reflection and elements of individual and collaborative learning during high stakes matches. Our findings help highlight evidence of perceptual learning, as it occurs over time and through the refinement of individual and collective skills, which is demonstrated through the players’ flexibility to adapt to increasingly complex challenges. We further see evidence of task cohesion and psychological safety, which corresponded with productive risk taking and group potency (or collective self-efficacy). Players also exhibit integration of effective reflection techniques and improved task and outcome interdependence. We contend that findings underscore the importance of esports as meaningful and noteworthy learning ecologies.