Effects of Thinking Style and Problem Difficulty on Students' Decision-Making Behavior in a Real Time Strategy Game

The purpose of this study is to explore the problem-solving processes, decision-making behaviors and tendencies of students facing different problem difficulty levels in strategy games. The problem difficulty in the strategy game as manipulated by two situational factors-information availability and resource advantages. Forty-five college and graduate student participated in the experiment. Quantitative data was measured to represent student's gaming performance, and qualitative data was collected to reveal the problem-solving process of students. Students' thinking style (liberal and conservative style), another variable related to students' problem solving tendencies and habits, served as a classification variable for students. Results indicated that, liberal style students have an "active-oriented" problem-solving style, whereas conservative students have a 'passive-oriented' problem-solving style. The two situational factors can be applied to construct a personalized game-based educational instrument to develop students' problem-solving skills by adjusting their difficulty level. Also, research findings on the two thinking styles in problem-solving processes will help support the development of a personalized and game based learning environment for strategic planning tanning. The results and implementation of this study are also discussed.