Games That Teach, Chats That Convince: Comparing Interactive and Static Formats for Persuasive Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Alavi, Seyed Hossein, Wang, Zining, Chockkalingam, Shruthi, Ng, Raymond T., Shwartz, Vered
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Alavi, Seyed Hossein
Wang, Zining
Chockkalingam, Shruthi
Ng, Raymond T.
Shwartz, Vered
author_facet Alavi, Seyed Hossein
Wang, Zining
Chockkalingam, Shruthi
Ng, Raymond T.
Shwartz, Vered
contents Interactive systems such as chatbots and games are increasingly used to persuade and educate on sustainability-related topics, yet it remains unclear how different delivery formats shape learning and persuasive outcomes when content is held constant. Grounding on identical arguments and factual content across conditions, we present a controlled user study comparing three modes of information delivery: static essays, conversational chatbots, and narrative text-based games. Across subjective measures, the chatbot condition consistently outperformed the other modes and increased perceived importance of the topic. However, perceived learning did not reliably align with objective outcomes: participants in the text-based game condition reported learning less than those reading essays, yet achieved higher scores on a delayed (24-hour) knowledge quiz. Additional exploratory analyses further suggest that common engagement proxies, such as verbosity and interaction length, are more closely related to subjective experience than to actual learning. These findings highlight a dissociation between how persuasive experiences feel and what participants retain, and point to important design trade-offs between interactivity, realism, and learning in persuasive systems and serious games.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_17905
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Games That Teach, Chats That Convince: Comparing Interactive and Static Formats for Persuasive Learning
Alavi, Seyed Hossein
Wang, Zining
Chockkalingam, Shruthi
Ng, Raymond T.
Shwartz, Vered
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Emerging Technologies
Interactive systems such as chatbots and games are increasingly used to persuade and educate on sustainability-related topics, yet it remains unclear how different delivery formats shape learning and persuasive outcomes when content is held constant. Grounding on identical arguments and factual content across conditions, we present a controlled user study comparing three modes of information delivery: static essays, conversational chatbots, and narrative text-based games. Across subjective measures, the chatbot condition consistently outperformed the other modes and increased perceived importance of the topic. However, perceived learning did not reliably align with objective outcomes: participants in the text-based game condition reported learning less than those reading essays, yet achieved higher scores on a delayed (24-hour) knowledge quiz. Additional exploratory analyses further suggest that common engagement proxies, such as verbosity and interaction length, are more closely related to subjective experience than to actual learning. These findings highlight a dissociation between how persuasive experiences feel and what participants retain, and point to important design trade-offs between interactivity, realism, and learning in persuasive systems and serious games.
title Games That Teach, Chats That Convince: Comparing Interactive and Static Formats for Persuasive Learning
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Emerging Technologies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.17905