The idea storming cube: Evaluating the effects of using game and computer agent to support divergent thinking

The objective of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of a collaborative and online brainstorming game, Idea Storming Cube (ISC), which provides users with a competitive game-based environment and a peer-like intelligent agent. The program seeks to promote students' divergent thinking to aid in the process of problem solving. The participants consisted of 72 11^th grade high school students who were assigned to one of three conditions: 1) information-based (ISC_info), 2) game-based (ISC_game) and 3) game-based with peer-like intelligent agent (ISC_game-agent) conditions. The results revealed that the ISC_game and the ISC_game-agent facilitated diversified ideas in problem solving and were considered beneficial for brainstorming. Although the divergent thinking process may not transfer to problem solving results immediately, it is our hope that the empirical result can shed some lights on the development of game-based systems for collaborative learning and problem solving support.