Article

Journal of Educational Computing

Research
A Mobile Contextualized 2024, Vol. 62(7) 1737–1762
© The Author(s) 2024
Educational Game Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/07356331241268505
Framework With ChatGPT journals.sagepub.com/home/jec

Interactive Scaffolding for

Employee Ethics Training

Yu-Chi Chen1 and Huei-Tse Hou1 

Abstract
Technologies like ChatGPT and other AI tools have impacted learning by giving
students more chances to ask questions and explore knowledge. The inclusion of Non-
Player Characters (NPCs) as scaffolding in game-based situated learning activities can
have a positive impact on learning. The application of ChatGPT to role-playing has
potential; therefore, this study designed a “ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding
Workflow Framework” and used it as the basis for designing and evaluating an ed-
ucational game for employee ethics training with empirical evidence. This study had
61 participants, divided into a document scaffolding group (n = 32) and a ChatGPT-
based NPC group (n = 29) and examined the learning achievement, flow, motivation,
and anxiety in the two groups. The results showed that the designs of both groups
benefited learning achievement, and both groups could maintain a certain level of high
motivation and engagement. Through qualitatively analyzing the content of students’
discussions with NPCs, it was found that there is potential for NPC-assisted learning
through ChatGPT. Overall, this study explored the efficacy and limitations of using
ChatGPT-based NPCs as scaffolding in game-based learning and found that it is ex-
tensible. We also present a framework for the design of ChatGPT-based NPCs
scaffolding mechanism.

1
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan

Corresponding Author:
Huei-Tse Hou, Graduate Institute of Applied Science and Technology, National Taiwan University of Science
and Technology, #43 Keelung Road, Section 4, Taipei 106, Taiwan.
Email: [email protected]
Data Availability Statement included at the end of the article
1738 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

Keywords
ChatGPT, non-player characters, situated learning, employee ethics, educational game

Introduction
ChatGPT has impacted education by facilitating active engagement in knowledge
learning where students need to interact with chatbots by asking questions as prompts
and exploring the responses more closely (Shalva, 2023). ChatGPT can help with
quizzes and problem-solving in college education (Oğuz et al., 2024). Although the
relevance and correctness of the knowledge content provided by ChatGPT is unstable
(Scheschenja et al., 2024), it should not be overlooked that ChatGPT is capable of
generating text that closely simulates human conversation, and can be used as a
personal or learning aid (Biswas, 2023). Therefore, ChatGPT has the potential to be
used in teaching employee ethics.
Employee ethics are part of organizational culture and affect both individual be-
havior and the organization’s performance and profits (Alexandre, 2023). All orga-
nizations have a culture, and employees must act ethically to prevent negative effects
(Peeters et al., 2019). Past research has pointed out that college students believe there
are not enough courses for them to learn about employee ethics before entering the
workplace (Maguire Associates, 2012). There is also a need to teach employee ethics to
freshmen who are new to the workplace or new to a job, as some research suggests that
senior employees believe that the employee ethics of young employees need to be
enhanced (Gates et al., 2021). Employee ethics includes many different concepts. Fam
et al. (2022) stated that employee ethics includes ethics and etiquette, suggesting that
not only work processes, but also things such as dressing for work and ensuring friendly
communication need to be maintained. When teaching ethics, making decisions by
analyzing situations is a helpful teaching method for students (Khort et al., 2021).
Game-based learning is a suitable strategy for integrating situations to increase
students’ engagement and learning transfer (Hou, 2023). Game-based learning pro-
vides interactive situations that simulate a real office in the workplace, and the potential
to develop key competencies in the workplace in fun, highly interactive and game tasks
with sense of control (Chein et al., 2024a). This learning method allows students to
experience a variety of situations in the workplace and to experience the results of
different workplace ethical situations while playing (Khort et al., 2021).
In a pilot study, we designed an employee ethics game, “Newbie, swipe, ethics”
(Chen & Hou, 2023), in which students played the role of a new employee and ex-
perienced a series of difficult employee ethics problems. The game is characterized by a
highly empathetic simulation and the mechanism for players to make timely choices by
swiping on the mobile, similar to the interaction of popular dating apps. The results of
the study showed that such a design might be beneficial to students’ learning of
employee ethics. The findings of the pilot study also suggested that there is a need to
further incorporate real-time scaffolding in the game to assist and guide learners. While
Chen and Hou 1739

past research has found that providing cognitive scaffolding in real time during
gameplay through real people playing the role of Non-Player Characters (NPCs) is
beneficial to learning, it takes more human resources and time to play the role remotely
with real people (Chan et al., 2023).
However, with the development of AI technology, using ChatGPT as a real-time
NPC to provide close-to-human interaction and cognitive scaffolding is possible and
has potential. Therefore, this study expanded “Newbie, swipe, ethics” by providing a
realistic Chat GPT-based NPC as a form of scaffolding during gameplay, and compared
it with scaffolding that only provides knowledge documents. This study investigated
the differences in learning achievement, flow, anxiety, and motivation between these
two types of scaffolding-integrated games, and surveyed the learners about their
experiences through an open-ended questionnaire. This study also proposes a
ChatGPT-based NPCs Scaffolding Design Framework and explores the effectiveness
and limitations of its innovative application to contextual game-based learning, and
discusses and proposes recommendations for future research.

Literature Review
ChatGPT and Chatbots for Education
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chat technology developed by OpenAI which is
capable of prompting and answering questions on different subjects of knowledge
(OpenAI, 2023). The important impact of ChatGPT on education is that it provides an
opportunity for students to actively explore knowledge; students use ChatGPT and
learn by chatting with it (Shalva, 2023). The current common application of ChatGPT
in higher education includes knowledge exploring, grammar correction, and strategy
selection in problem solving (Oğuz et al., 2024). Various studies have examined the
validity of the content, such as Scheschenja et al. (2024), for patient education prior to
procedures; the chance of ChatGPT giving incorrect information was below 6% for
both the old and new versions of ChatGPT. In a study by Takagi et al. (2023), it was
pointed out that ChatGPT’s response on medical knowledge was able to meet the
standard of passing the Japanese Medical Licensing Examination. Based on the lit-
erature review, ChatGPT has a certain degree of accuracy in knowledge provision, and
thus this technology has become an increasingly important research topic as a form of
chatbot-assisted learning.
The integration of chatbots into learning is a trend, and Deng and Yu’s (2023) review
study categorized the use of chatbots in learning into three types: tutor, teaching
assistant, and partner. The tutor is used to provide questions, encourage students, and
interact with each other; the teaching assistant is used as a form of scaffolding for
professional knowledge and formative feedback; and the partner is used to provide text
or voice chat interactions. Chatbots are not only providers of knowledge but also
supporters of learning. They can be used to assist in role-playing, storytelling, and
writing (Zhang et al., 2023). Chatbots have been a popular gamification element
1740 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

embedded in a variety of educational materials, such as González-González et al.’s

(2023) study on incorporating chatroom interactions into mathematics learning to
promote student engagement. Even the chatting process can be a game, as in the
educational game designed by Al Kahf et al. (2023), where students gain knowledge
and points by talking to a chatbot. The introduction of ChatGPT has made it easier to
integrate chatbot applications with learning situations. In Maurya’s (2023) study, in
order to develop students’ sales skills in a learning activity, background information
about customers was given to ChatGPT as prompt data, so that the students could have
conversations with the customers played by ChatGPT and learn from them.
However, there is a limitation to using ChatGPT as a direct teaching aid. The source
of the data answered by ChatGPT is a black box, and it is difficult for the instructor to
ensure that the content conforms to a specific textbook or guideline in terms of
professional correctness. Therefore, Khadija et al. (2023) proposed a design that
provided the PDF file of a textbook and then allowed ChatGPT to answer based on the
PDF content, and the results show that ChatGPT can effectively summarize the content
of a textbook and present it in a chat format. Chubb (2023) also used PDFs of
qualitative data for research and then asked ChatGPT to focus on the data summaries,
and the results showed that this approach helped to focus the use of ChatGPT on the
textbooks or guides that instructors wanted to present to their students.
However, problems may be encountered when using PDFs in this way. Ayub et al.
(2023) prepared the content of a medical textbook and expected to use ChatGPT to
organize format-specific questions from the textbook, but found that the accuracy and
complexity were not good, which is different from the results of other studies that used
pre-prepared documents for ChatGPT. The study of Khadija et al. (2023) mentioned
that too much text or too many tables and images in the PDFs decreased the quality of
the PDFs summarized by ChatGPT.

Game-Based Learning With Scaffolding

Game-based learning, also known as learning through playing games, can interact with
instructional methods or strategies such as situated learning and scaffolding theory, and
promote student motivation, engagement, and positively affect learning transfer (Hou,
2023). Vygotsky (1978) proposed the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which is
the gap between a student’s ability to perform on his own and his ability to be assisted
by an adult or peers, and the aids to help the student cross this gap are called scaffolding.
In a past study, Chen et al. (2023a) incorporated different representational (text, 2D
figures, and 3D models) cues as scaffolding in a geometry learning game to facilitate
student learning.
Scaffolding can be presented in a way that is not only additional hints to the learning,
but can also be integrated into situated learning situations. For example, Chen et al.
(2023b) in a business decision-making game have students play the role of an office
employee in a virtual office and communicate with the office characters or view office
documents in a story situation. The textual content of the knowledge presented in these
Chen and Hou 1741

interactions can be used as scaffolding for the students. The scaffolding is presented in
such a way that it feels like part of the game situation rather than an additional source of
supplemental information.
Chan et al. (2023) used a history learning game in which students play the role of a
person from a past period and solve puzzles in a situation to gain historical knowledge.
The entire game is multiplayer, remote and synchronized, and the game also includes
real-person NPCs in addition to the learners, who wear historical clothing and speak in
the tone of that era through webcam and audio to provide scaffolding. In the process of
the game, learners not only interact with other learners, but also interact with real-
person NPCs. The results showed that such a design has a positive impact on learning,
but it also costs more human resources and time.
Both the document and real-person NPC presentations of scaffolding in context have
demonstrated the potential for integrating scaffolding with situations, but the design of
the real-person NPCs allowed for more opportunities for students to interact socially in
the game than the document presentation.
In past ChatGPT-integrated game-based learning activities, usually the ChatGPT
just played the role of an answer provider (Chen & Chang, 2024). However, there is
also potential for the ChatGPT to play the role of NPCs as a guide for the game, such as
in Stampfl et al.’s (2024) study where the ChatGPT acted as a consultant to the
management of the company, and the students were guided through a discussion with
the ChatGPT. Chien et al. (2024b) used ChatGPT as a provider of clue scaffolding in a
story line in a game and showed that such a design had a positive effect on students’
flow and motivation without feeling overly anxious. In Chen & Hou’s (2024) study, it
was also noted that students were in a state of high flow and high motivation when
interacting with role-playing ChatGPT scaffolding. Chen & Chang (2024) also noted
that the integration of games with ChatGPT as scaffolding was less psychologically
burdensome for students than games alone.
Therefore, using ChatGPT to role-play a NPC in a game situation is a design that
should be explored, especially in single-player games, where the use of ChatGPT-based
NPCs can lead to more social interaction. This study also further proposes a design
framework for using ChatGPT-based NPCs as scaffolding in educational games with an
emphasis on simulation (e.g., employment ethics in a workplace context), and explores
its possible potentials and limitations.

Limitations of Employee Ethics Education

Employee ethics are influenced by culture and many different factors. Van Buren and
Greenwood (2013) mentioned that employee ethics in some countries are influenced by
the biblical culture. Employees are expected to maintain integrity and honesty at work,
and employers are expected to be friendly to their employees by giving them better pay
and proper working hours. However, in practice, due to the market mechanism and
business interests, sometimes employers do not treat employees in a friendly way. In
Berg et al. (2021), it was pointed out that etiquette is also included in the Chinese
1742 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

employee ethics culture, which includes different cultural characteristics such as

“introducing oneself by the first name only” and “providing delicious food for others,”
in addition to the common values of honesty and responsibility. Woods and Lamond
(2011) mentioned that in East Asian countries, such as China, Japan, and Korea, which
are influenced by Confucianism, there is a greater emphasis on self-reflection and
mentoring in employee ethics. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to whether the
culture and context are in line with the learner’s life situation in the first step of ethical
education in the workplace.
Bairaktarova et al. (2015) found that the ability to follow employee ethics is an
important part of a student’s field work, but employee ethics is currently less frequently
included as a compulsory subject in universities. Allen & Simpson (2019) suggest that
employee ethics is now one of the most important subjects that students, academics and
business owners believe should be included in schools. There are fewer studies that
discuss the strategies and methods of teaching employee ethics. A common peda-
gogical approach to teaching ethics in the workplace is to provide case scenarios where
the learner analyzes the situation and allows the student to develop his or her own
perspective and evaluate the solution (Rudnicka, 2005).
Floyd et al.’s (2013) study mentioned that there is a lack of teaching of employee
ethics, and there are still studies to this day that indicate that senior employees believe
that new employees’ knowledge of employee ethics is lacking (Gates et al., 2021).
Floyd et al. (2013) mentioned that one of the ways to effectively teach ethics in the
workplace is to directly allow students to practice in real-world situations. However, in
practice, it is costly to arrange for each student to go to a real workplace for internship or
training. Digital games are characterized by providing realistic situations for students to
practice in the virtual world (Hou, 2023). Digital games can be used as a training tool in
the classroom or before students go to the real workplace by incorporating real-life
situations that match the local employee ethics and culture.
Katsarov et al. (2017) point out that presenting contexts and interactions in games
that are close to the real world can facilitate students’ perception of specific ethical
concepts, further influencing their identification and reflection. Schrier (2017) identifies
one of the key designs for facilitating student learning in ethics education games as:
allowing students to experience ethical choices and allowing students to experience or
observe the outcomes of different choices. Cabellos & Pozo’s (2023) research suggests
that by experiencing ethical dilemmas and making choices in games, students’
awareness of and empathy for ethical issues can be promoted. Games also provide real-
time evaluation and feedback on the solutions proposed by the students. Learning about
ethical issues through games is a well-established method of teaching and learning, and
has a positive impact on the training of knowledge to a certain extent.
There are fewer studies discussing scaffolding in ethics instruction. Tammeleht et al.
(2020) added scaffolding to support learning in ethics instruction activities and found
that scaffolding was helpful for some students in understanding and thinking about the
issues by having the instructor observe the discussion and give scaffolding support
verbally during the discussion. However, the study also pointed out that such a
Chen and Hou 1743

scaffolding design would be less stable as the timing and content of the scaffolding
would be affected by different instructors. Ng et al.’s (2024) study suggests that the
situation, text, and other multimedia elements of the game elements are appropriate
scaffolding for ethical learning activities. ChatGPT has the potential to be used as
scaffolding and contextualization in game-based learning and can be scaffolded ap-
propriately and with quality according to students’ questions. This study aims to
investigate the learning achievement of ethical educational games combined with
ChatGPT-based NPC for knowledge learning and analyze the students’ experience with
this design.

Research Questions
Summarizing the literature review, this study suggests that there is potential for in-
corporating ChatGPT-based NPCs as a scaffolding instructional design in the previous
contextualized educational game, “Newbie, swipe, ethics.” We conducted a pilot study
on the game mechanism and content of the game, “Newbie, swipe, ethics” (Chen &
Hou, 2023), and the results showed that students had a certain level of high motivation,
high flow, and low anxiety during the game. This study aimed to investigate the effects
of adding a ChatGPT-based NPC as a scaffold for learning.
Therefore, we designed a document scaffolding group, in which the scaffolding was
presented only as a document in the game, and we also had a ChatGPT-based NPCs
scaffolding group, in which the students talked to realistic NPCs to get the scaffolding.
In this study, learning achievement was measured by pretest and posttest. As research
has suggested that ChatGPT has a positive effect on learning motivation (Shalva,
2023), we wanted to investigate how ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding affects stu-
dents. We also aimed to explore whether the addition of ChatGPT-based NPCs
scaffolding to a learning game would potentially increase or decrease the flow in the
game, or increase engagement or anxiety as a result of the increased interaction
methods. The following research questions were posed for this study:

1. What are the performance and differences in learning achievement, flow,

motivation, and anxiety between the document scaffolding group and the
ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group?
2. How are the scaffolds of the document scaffolding group and the ChatGPT-
based NPCs scaffolding group utilized?

Method
Research Design
The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design and was divided into a
document scaffolding group and a ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group. Both
groups experimented with the scaffolding-based employee ethics learning game,
1744 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

“Newbie, Swipe, Ethics.” The document scaffolding group was provided with a readily
accessible documented file of employee ethics knowledge during the game. The
ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group learners had three chances to talk to the NPCs
played by ChatGPT during the game to gain knowledge about employee ethics. Both
groups took a pretest and posttest on employee ethics knowledge and completed the
flow scale, motivation scale, anxiety scale, and scaffolding using experience
questionnaire.

Participants and Research Procedure

A total of 61 participants were recruited for this study which was conducted using
online open recruitment. Participants were recruited from the age of 20 and above and
included those who were interested in learning about employee ethics. The participants
consisted of 20 males and 41 females. Since the workplace situations covered a wide
range of ages and backgrounds, the ages of the participants were 20–25 (n = 22, 36.1%),
26–30 (n = 15, 24.6%), 31–35 (n = 8, 13.1%), 36–40 (n = 3, 4.9%), 41–45 (n = 5, 8.2%),
46–50 (n = 4, 6.6%), and above (n = 4, 6.6%). Other than that, the study did not restrict
the participants to other backgrounds.
All participants were randomly assigned to either the document scaffolding group
(n = 29) or the ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group (n = 32). The research process
and scales of this study were reviewed by the Office of Research Ethics, National
Chengchi University, Case No. (NCCU-REC-202007-E077).
The procedure of the study is shown in Figure 1. Before the experiment, the re-
searcher asked the participant to sign an informed consent form informing them of all
their rights. The total time for the whole experiment was 70 minutes. At the beginning,
both groups were asked to complete a pretest on employee ethics (20 min). Then the
participants were asked to play the game (20 min). Since the scope of learning in this
study is not large and only focuses on the knowledge of basic ethical concepts in the
workplace, a 20-min experiential game-based learning session is more suitable for the
classroom situation. The content and process of the game was the same for both groups,
but the difference was in the design of the scaffold. The Document Scaffolding Group
game includes a re-readable employee ethics knowledge document as a scaffold. The
ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group is a situational ChatGPT-based NPC, where
participants could ask questions to the ChatGPT-based NPC to obtain the scaffolding,
and the source of information behind the ChatGPT-based NPC was the same as the
employee ethics knowledge document available to the document scaffolding group. In
order to more realistically reflect the way in which participants asked questions and
encountered bottlenecks, we did not conduct any pre-training for participants, who only
needed to ask NPCs according to the daily dialogue to obtain the scaffolding, and the
dialogue of the query itself is a prompting to the AI and will be responded to by the
NPCs in a dialogue manner.
At the end of the game, a posttest of knowledge (20 min) was administered. The
pretest and posttest used the same questionnaire to examine the learning achievement of
Chen and Hou 1745

Figure 1. Research procedure.

the participants. All groups were asked to complete the Flow, Motivation, and Anxiety
scales and Scaffolding Using Experience Questionnaire (10 min) after the posttest.

Employee Ethics Learning Game – Newbie, Swipe, Ethics

“Newbie, Swipe, Ethics” is an employee ethics learning game featuring both interactive
mechanisms and scaffolding design. In the game, learners need to play the role of a new
employee, experience ethical dilemmas in the workplace, and make the right choices to
earn more Rank Stars in the game. The interface of the game is shown in Figure 2, and
the game is played by swiping cards, which is a common method used by modern
dating applications such as Tinder (Dai & Robbins, 2021). In the game, students need to
read the situation and make decisions by Swipe Left or Right (Figure 2).
As an example in Figure 2, “My immediate supervisor has asked me to give her my
newly created e-mail account at the company, but the HR Manager responsible for
setting up the account has told me it will have to wait. Should I rush the HR Manager or
tell the HR Manager that I will wait until he finishes setting it up?” At this time, if the
player chooses to urge (swipe left), he will lose one Rank Star, if he chooses to wait
(swipe right), he will get one Rank Star. In addition, there is a countdown time limit for
1746 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

Figure 2. Game situation and operation instructions.

each choice, and simulating interactions with others in a real workplace event does not
allow them to wait for a long time without responding. All situations in the game were
scripted in discussion with senior managers with 30 years of experience in business to
ensure the validity of the content.
In the game, this study designed a virtual NPC, Yuna, as the scaffold provider, who is
a best friend of the player, currently works in a human resource management company
and has good knowledge related to employee ethics. In the document scaffolding group,
Yuna provides scaffolding by leaving documents for players to read, and they can click
on the Hint button and read learning support at any time during play (Figure 3). In the
ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group, every time there is an opportunity to chat with
Yuna after a work day (using the ChatGPT chatbot). At the end of each workday, a chat
window pops up and reminds the player that they can talk to Yuna about their work
before going to bed, where they can ask questions to get more information about
employment ethics and get guidance and support for the next day’s work challenges.
(Figure 4).
In the ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group, Yuna, the scaffolding provider, is
played by the ChatGPT-based chatbot, which is paired with ChatPDF (https://www.
chatpdf.com/), an integrated application based on ChatGPT that analyzes the re-
searcher’s pre-configured documents as a basis for answering questions (Ayub et al.,
2023). In this study, following the findings of Khadija et al. (2023), documents with
fewer pages and without graphs and tables were produced to reduce the interference of
ChatPDF in parsing text and to improve the accuracy of ChatGPT-based NPC re-
sponses. This document is the same as the one read by the Document Scaffolding
Group. As shown in Figure 5, after a player sends a question, the question will be
Chen and Hou 1747

Figure 3. Document scaffolding group using document scaffolding.

Figure 4. ChatGPT-based NPCs Scaffolding group using NPCs scaffolding.

1748 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

presented as a spoken conversation by using ChatGPT’s (ChatPDF) text analytics

technology to collate the information from the knowledge document and convert it into
spoken text. Before the response is presented to the player, the response string is then
subjected to this study’s text-substitution mechanism, which replaces certain words that
do not fit the NPC’s situation, such as “According to my documentation, I can tell you
about the following knowledge...,” where the word “documentation” is replaced with
“According to my profession, I can tell you about the following knowledge.” There are
other things like “Assistant” being replaced with “Friend” to make their responses more
in line with the NPC’s characterization. Due to the ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding
Framework was pre-loaded with knowledge documents (including contextual settings)
and characterization prompts, players could simply ask questions intuitively and get
answers from the NPCs as if they were friends in daily conversations.

Research Tools
Employee Ethics Test. To evaluate learners’ knowledge of employee ethics concepts, in
the pilot study (Chen & Hou, 2023), the researcher compiled a list of employee ethics
concepts as shown in Table 1, based on a literature review and discussions with experts

Figure 5. ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding Design Framework.

Table 1. Employee Ethics Concepts.

Concept Content

Return progress Ask questions immediately and report progress instantly.

Don’t bypass the immediate Messages should follow the organizational hierarchy and should
leadership not be crossed over.
Comply with the company’s Dress appropriately according to the company’s rules and
dress code culture.
Always be polite Respecting others.
Don’t gossip. Avoid gossip about coworkers or managers.
Reduce parochialism Make decisions that prioritize the interests of the work or
group.
Chen and Hou 1749

(senior managers with 30 years of work experience). A total of 20 situational questions

were designed based on these concepts. Each question is worth 5 points and is a
multiple-choice question with a full score of 100. The questions state a situation, such
as: “Last week you made an appointment with your co-worker Mei to visit a client
today, but Mei not only forgot, but also blamed you for not making it clear. If it were
you, what specific actions would you respond to a co-worker like Mei?” and provide
four action choices for students to select.

Flow Scale. In this study, to explore the students’ flow (the state of engagement) in
learning activities, Kiili’s (2006) flow scale for games was used as the measure of flow,
and the Chinese version of the scale was translated and modified by Hou and Li (2014).
The flow scale was divided into two dimensions: flow antecedent and flow experience.
The scale is based on a 5-point Likert’s scale with 22 questions, with higher scores
meaning more engagement. Its reliability in this study was 0.907 (Cronbach’s alpha =
.907) indicating high internal validity.

Motivation Scale. Based on the ARCS model of motivation proposed by Keller (1987),
the learning motivation is composed of four factors: Attention, Relevance, Confidence,
and Satisfaction. In this study, the scale adapted from Chen’s (2008) ARCS model was
used, which was based on a 5-point Likert’s scale. In this study, the overall reliability of
the motivation scale was 0.980 (Cronbach’s α = .980), which was highly reliable.

Anxiety Scale. The anxiety scale in this study was adapted from the Learning Experience
Scale designed by Hung (2001), which is based on Krashen’s (1981, 1982) Affective
Filter Hypothesis. In this study, we used the learning anxiety section of the Learning
Experiences Scale, which consisted of eight questions. The questionnaire was based on
a 5-point Likert’s scale, with 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree, and
the higher the score means the more anxious the student is. In this study, the overall
reliability of the Activity Anxiety Scale was 0.907 (Cronbach’s α = .907), which is
highly reliable.

Scaffolding Using Experience Questionnaire

This study designed the questionnaire for the document scaffolding group on whether
text scaffolding is useful for learning. This questionnaire included questions asking
students whether scaffolding is useful for learning (on a 5-point scale), as well as how
scaffolding is useful for learning, and an open-ended question on when players would
read scaffolding. For students in the ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group, this
study designed the questionnaire and asked students about the usefulness of the
ChatGPT-based NPC scaffold for learning (5-point scale). In addition, there were two
open-ended questions asking players about how the scaffolding helped learning and
how players interacted with the ChatGPT-based NPC.
1750 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

Results and Discussion

Regarding research question 1, the following descriptions and comparisons of learning
achievement, flow, and anxiety were made between the two groups of learners during
the game.

Learning Achievement
In this study, paired-sample t tests were used to examine whether there was a significant
difference between the pretest and posttest in the two groups, and to calculate effect
sizes (Table 2). The results showed that the posttest of the document scaffolding group
was significantly higher than the pretest (t = 4.131, p = .000 < .001) and had a small
effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.37 > 0.2). The posttest of the ChatGPT-based NPCs
scaffolding group was shown to be significantly higher than the pretest (t = 2.911, p =
.007 < .01) and had a small effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.21 > 0.2). Levene’s test was
performed on the two groups of pretests and showed that the pretests of the two groups
were equal variances not assumed (F = 7.590, p = .008).
The Levene’s test was performed after adjusting both sets of pretests using Square
Root Transformation, and the results still showed that the pretests of both groups were
equal variances not assumed (F = 7.349, p = .009). Therefore, we analyzed whether
there was a difference between the pretest and posttest of the two groups using an
independent sample t test (Table 3), which showed that there was no significant
between-group difference between the pretest (t = .724, p = .472) and posttest
(t = 1.554, p = .126).
As indicated in Deng and Yu’s (2023) review study, the chatbot had a medium-to-
high overall effect size on learning achievement, which is because students needed to
review the current information and ask questions based on it to get feedback before
acquiring new information. In this study, we found that both groups of scaffolding-
based game-based learning activities showed improvement in the posttest compared to
the pretest; however, there was no difference in the learning achievement of the two
groups, and there was no difference between the cognitively assistive effects of the
ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding and that of the scaffolding provided by the document
files.

Table 2. Paired Samples t Test of Two Groups.

Pretest Posttest
Cohen’s
Group M SD M SD t p d

Document scaffolding group (n = 29) 72.07 13.060 78.28 9.188 4.131 .000 0.378
ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding 69.69 12.632 73.59 14.041 2.911 .007 0.214
group (n = 32)
Chen and Hou 1751

The study also used an independent t-test to determine whether there were sig-
nificant differences in the pre-test of learning achievement between the gender dif-
ferences in the two groups, which showed that there were no significant gender
differences in the pre-test of learning achievement of the Document scaffolding group
(t = 1.277, p = .211) and the ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group (t = .740,
p = .466), indicating that students of different genders had the same prior knowledge
about employment ethics before conducting the activity.

Flow
In this study, descriptive statistics were analyzed for the two groups of flow, and an
independent sample t test was compared with the median of the scale (i.e., 3). Results
showed that in the document scaffolding group, flow antecedent (t = 13.525, p = .000 <
.001), flow experience (t = 9.896, p = .000 < .001), and overall flow (t = 12.992, p =
.000 < .001) were significantly higher than 3.
The independent sample t test was used to analyze whether there was a significant
difference in flow between the two groups (Table 4), which showed that there was no
significant difference between the two groups in flow antecedent (t = .589, p = .559),
flow experience (t = .088, p = .930), and flow (t = .244, p = .808). This result is
consistent with the pilot study’s finding that the instructional games in this study were
designed to allow for a high level of student engagement (Chen & Hou, 2023). Also, as

Table 3. Independent t Test of the Pretest and Posttest of the Two Groups.

Document ChatGPT-based
scaffolding group NPCs scaffolding
(n = 29) group (n = 32)

Group M SD M SD t p

Pretest 72.07 13.060 69.69 12.632 .724 .472

Posttest 78.28 9.188 73.59 14.041 1.554 .126

Table 4. Independent Samples t Test of Flow Between Two Groups.

Document ChatGPT-based
scaffolding group NPCs scaffolding
(n = 29) group (n = 32)

Group M SD M SD t p

Flow Antecedent 4.106 .440 4.012 .780 .589 .559

Flow Experience 3.879 .478 3.893 .736 .088 .930
Flow 3.982 .407 3.947 .699 .244 .808
1752 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

in past research, using ChatGPT to engage in learning is able to facilitate student

engagement (Ruiz-Rojas et al., 2023).
The results of the study showed no significant difference between the two groups in
flow, indicating that the inclusion of ChatGPT-based NPCs in the game would not
negatively affect engagement. Chatbots could have been used as a game element and
promoted student engagement (González-González et al., 2023). In summary, this
study designed the ChatGPT-based NPC as a friend role to provide scaffolding as-
sistance, which is feasible and can be analyzed in more depth in the future with respect
to the factors affecting engagement.

Motivation
In this study, the motivation data of the two groups were compared with the median of
the scale (i.e., 3) using the independent sample t test. The results showed that the
document scaffolding group scored significantly higher than 3 in motivation (t = 9.949,
p = .000 < .001). The results showed that the ChatGPT-based NPC group scored
significantly higher than 3 in motivation (t = 7.228, p = .000 < .001). An independent
sample t test was then used to compare the motivation of the two groups for differences
(Table 5), which showed that there were no significant differences between the two
groups of motivation (t = .576, p = .567).
Both groups in this study had a certain degree of high motivation, and game-based
learning had a positive effect on enhancing motivation (Hou, 2023). There was no
significant difference between the motivation of the two groups, which means that the
inclusion of ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding in game-based learning has no sig-
nificant effect on learning motivation. In a past study, it was noted that the inclusion of
chatbots in research is usually associated with higher motivation compared to tradi-
tional instruction (Deng & Yu, 2023), but fewer studies have examined the differences
in the impact of the inclusion of chatbots as scaffolding on the motivation of game-
based learning. The results of the present study can be used as a reference.
In addition, the inclusion of realistic NPC in games has had a positive effect on
students’ motivation in the past (Chan et al., 2023), and the use of ChatGPT-based NPC
in games in this study also had a positive effect on motivation, meaning that the use of
ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding has the potential to achieve the same effect of

Table 5. Independent Samples t Test of Motivation Between Two Groups.

Document ChatGPT-based
scaffolding group NPCs scaffolding
(n = 29) group (n = 32)

Group M SD M SD t p

Motivation 4.224 .662 4.109 .868 .576 .567

Chen and Hou 1753

enhancing or maintaining motivation with fewer human resources than the use of
realistic NPC in games, and also has more interactive simulation than just providing
documents as a scaffold.

Anxiety
In this study, the anxiety data of the two groups were compared with the median of the
scale (i.e., 3) using the independent sample t test. The results showed that the document
scaffolding group was significantly lower than 3 on anxiety (t = 2.366, p = .025 < .01).
The ChatGPT-based NPC group did not differ significantly from 3 on anxiety
(t = 1.567, p = .127).
Using an independent sample t test to compare whether there was a difference in
anxiety between the two groups (Table 6), the results showed that there was no
significant difference (t = .576, p = .518). Students’ anxiety was significantly lower
than 3 in the pilot study (Chen & Hou, 2023) without the addition of the document
scaffolding or the ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding, but not significantly lower than
3 with the addition of the simulated NPC in the current study. There were other factors
after adding the ChatGPT-based NPC that caused some students to be slightly more
anxious than the group that did not use the ChatGPT-based NPC, but the overall level of
anxiety was also not greater than 3 (M = 2.656). As pointed out by Hong et al. (2020),
game-based learning can reduce learning anxiety, but the same game will have different
effects on anxiety when a different instructional mechanism is added.

Analysis of the Usability of Scaffolding

Regarding research question 2. In this study, scaffold usage was analyzed for the
document scaffolding group, and the mean for the document scaffolding group in terms
of their usefulness for document scaffolding was 3.41 (SD = 1.119). From the
qualitative questionnaire on the usefulness of the scaffolding, 25 out of 29 (86%)
students indicated that the document scaffolding hints were helpful in learning
knowledge, while the other four (14%) indicated that they were not helpful. Regarding
the time of use, 16 students (55%) reported that they only checked it at the beginning of
the game, but not during the game. Another eight (27%) students reported checking

Table 6. Independent Samples t Test of Anxiety Between Two Groups.

Document ChatGPT-based
scaffolding group NPCs scaffolding
(n = 29) group (n = 32)

Group M SD M SD t p

Anxiety 2.448 1.256 2.656 1.240 .650 .518

1754 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

back when they encountered decision-making difficulties during the game. Five (17%)
noted that they did not view it during the game.
This study analyzed scaffold usage for the ChatGPT-based NPC group, and the
ChatGPT-based NPC group had a mean of 3.03 (SD = 1.231) in terms of usefulness for
the ChatGPT-based NPC scaffold. The mean of the realistic findings against the
ChatGPT-based NPC scaffold was 2.94 (SD = 1.045). In the qualitative questionnaire
on scaffold usage, out of 32 students, 20 (63%) responded that interacting with the
ChatGPT-based NPC scaffold was helpful and interesting, while two (6%) indicated
that they did not know how to start asking questions, and 10 (31%) indicated that it was
not very helpful to their learning. Regarding the question “How do you decide what
questions to ask ChatGPT-based NPCs?”, 14 (44%) of the students indicated that their
questions were based on the game situation, and 10 (31%) indicated that their questions
were based on their own life thoughts. Seven (22%) of the students found it difficult to
ask questions or had no idea, and one (3%) of the students did not ask any questions.
In the ChatGPT-based NPC group, 31 students used the ChatGPT-based NPCs
scaffolding, and some of them did not successfully retrieve the chat logs due to a game
system error. A total of 25 students’ chat logs were retrieved in this study, which
consisted of 120 questioning logs. Among them, 65 (54%) questions were related to
employee ethics, while 55 (46%) were unrelated. The realistic ChatGPT-based NPCs
scaffolding was able to search from the researcher’s predefined document and answer
the 65 questions related to employee ethics in a manner close to human speech. Ayub
et al. (2023) used ChatPDF as a ChatGPT application as in this study and showed that it
works for simple questions, but it was wrong for complex questions (such as generating
test papers).
After qualitative content analysis of the NPC responses, no incorrect response
information was found in any of the questions related to employee ethics. However, as
Chubb (2023) points out, the process of analyzing the text to give responses, whether
using ChatPDF or other ChatGPT applications, is similar to a black box, and it is
difficult for the researcher to know the rationale. As one of the questions in this study,
the player asked “What should one wear on the first day of work?”, and the realistic
NPC replied: “It is recommended to try to wear plain shirts and pants to match with the
clothes in the company which is the safest. You can stay in the company for a few
months to familiarize yourself with the rules of the dress code before you start to make
changes. Therefore, on your first day at work, we recommend you wear formal and
decent clothing, such as a suit or a dress.” The phrases “wear a plain shirt and pants” and
“stay in the company for a few months to familiarize yourself with the rules of the dress
code before you start to make changes” are extensions of the content of the knowledge
text we provided. However, “On your first day of work, we recommend that you wear
formal and modest clothing, such as a suit or a dress” was not in the provided
knowledge document, and although it can be categorized as a correct response, there is
no way of knowing why such a knowledge supplement was generated. This may also
lead to potentially imprecise responses in the application of more professionally
oriented fields of study, an issue that deserves to be explored in future research.
Chen and Hou 1755

Of the unrelated questions, 20 (36%) used the ChatGPT-based NPC as a personal

assistant to ask questions such as “What time do I have to work tomorrow? and “Do I
have a meeting tomorrow?”. Five (9%) of the questions were about other characters in
the game, such as “Barbara is mean, what should I do?” and “What kind of lunchbox
does Rika like?” In addition to this, six (11%) of the unrelated questions expressed
emotions related to the game situation, such as “I’m tired of going to work” and “When
can I leave my job?” The remaining 23 (42%) were casual conversations such as asking
“What’s for lunch?”.
Because the NPC’s background document only included employee ethics infor-
mation, the NPC will say it doesn’t know the answer to irrelevant questions. Few
studies have looked at using ChatGPT for role-play in learning, and some students
might ignore the NPC’s role and treat it as an all-knowing assistant. the application of
ChatGPT as a specific role-play in the learning process, and perhaps some students may
disregard the role-play of this NPC and inquire about the ChatGPT-based NPC as an all-
knowing assistant. Some students also asked questions about other characters in the
game, which means that the situation of the game may become one of the factors
affecting students’ questions.
In future designs, adding plot details as background information could help the GPT
generate more appropriate responses. A few students would express emotions related to
the game plot to the realistic NPCs, which may be a response to their feeling empathy
for the game situation, but the realistic NPCs would not give feedback related to
emotional support, as described by Maurya (2023) when playing a character setup in
ChatGPT, which would be less emotionally up and down.

Conclusion
This study made an initial investigation of ChatGPT as a realistic NPC application, in
response to research question one, “What are the performance and differences in
learning achievement, flow, motivation, and anxiety between the document scaffolding
group and the ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group?”. Both the document scaf-
folding group and the ChatGPT-based NPC group contributed to students’ learning
achievement in employee ethics, but there was no difference between the two groups.
Unlike past studies comparing chatbot-assisted learning with traditional methods
(Deng & Yu, 2023), this study evaluates the impact of chatbots on learning in edu-
cational games.
In the future, we can explore the effects of different chatbot designs on students’
learning achievement, and propose ChatGPT scaffolding designs that may help provide
more cognitive learning facilitation (e.g., more focused, and consultative guidance).
In terms of motivation and flow, although there was no significant difference be-
tween the document scaffolding group and the ChatGPT-based NPC group, the scores
of both groups were higher than 3, which means that the students had a certain degree of
motivation and engagement in the game, just as the past study on game-based learning
(Chen et al., 2023a) pointed out that learners can have high motivation and engagement
1756 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

in game-based learning. Similar to the findings of Chan et al.’s (2023) study, the
provision of NPC-assisted learning that is situationally relevant is beneficial for
motivation and engagement and is also similar to the findings of previous research on
chatbots that found chatbots to be beneficial for learning motivation (Zhang et al.,
2023). However, perhaps because the game itself can have the effect of promoting a
high level of motivation and flow in learners, it is more difficult for the additional NPC
scaffolds to significantly increase the flow and motivation of learners over the doc-
ument scaffolding group. There was no significant difference in anxiety between the
two groups.
In response to Research Question 2: “How are the scaffolds of the document
scaffolding group and the ChatGPT-based NPCs scaffolding group utilized?”, 86% of
students in the document scaffolding group reported that document scaffolding was
helpful. In addition, only 63% of the students in the ChatGPT-based NPC group
thought that ChatGPT-based NPC was helpful for learning, and from further analysis in
this study, it could be found that 22% of the students did not know how to ask questions
to the NPC. Therefore, in the future, new application models should be found for
ChatGPT-based aids, so that ChatGPT-based NPC can focus on enhancing learning
achievement and adding scaffolds to guide learners or actively guide learners on how to
ask questions and facilitate learners to return to thinking about the learning topic.

Suggestions and Limitations

It is suggested that future research can focus on the impact of different game pre-
sentation methods combined with ChatGPT-based NPC on students, such as Visual
Novel or Role-playing educational games with ChatGPT. It is also suggested that we
can try to control and refine the response of ChatGPT in a variety of ways, and try to
make ChatGPT play the role of a simulated situation as well as a facilitator to enhance
learning achievement. At the same time, we also suggest that future studies need to take
into consideration the students’ ChatGPT prompting ability. From the results of this
study, it was found that there were still a portion of players who did not know how to
start to ask questions with the NPCs to obtain the scaffolds, therefore, in future studies,
we should consider provide the questioning quotes or examples to help the students to
use the NPCs for scaffolding.
The participants in this study were mainly in the age group of 20–30 years old, and it
is difficult to extrapolate the results to children or middle-aged and older adults because
of the need to take into consideration the acceptance of technology as well as the ability
to utilize technology.
The participants in this study were 41 males and 20 females, with more males.
Although there was no difference in the prior knowledge between the genders in this
study, it is important to note that the preference of game mechanics for game-based
learning and the view and behavioral patterns of employment ethics may differ by
gender (Aisyah & Hani, 2020; Mardawi et al., 2021) and therefore requires attention in
inference and future research. In open-ended questionnaires, this study found that some
Chen and Hou 1757

players did not know how to ask ChatGPT questions effectively. In this era, asking
questions via Generative AI and using search engines to find answers are the main-
stream channels for acquiring knowledge from the Internet (Zhou & Li, 2024).
However, the present study did not investigate the subjects’ ability to use ChatGPT, so
it is important to include this ability as a background variable in future studies. In
addition, the duration of this study was relatively short, which made it difficult to
observe the changes in students’ behaviors and attitudes. In the future, we hope to
analyze larger samples and even analyze the behavioral patterns and content of
learners’ interactions with ChatGPT. It is also expected that a longer study will be
conducted to observe changes in learning retention and attitudes, and unstructured
interviews will be added to provide a deeper insight into students’ learning experiences
and strategies.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the projects from the Ministry of
Science and Technology, Taiwan, under contract number MOST- 110-2511-H-011 -004 -MY3
and MOST-111-2410-H-011 -004 -MY3, and the Empower Vocational Education Research
Center of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) from the Featured
Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by
the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan.

IRB Statement
The research process and scales of this study were reviewed by the Office of Research Ethics,
National Chengchi University, Case No. (NCCU-REC-202007-E077).

ORCID iD
Huei-Tse Hou  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1783-8830

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon
reasonable request.

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1762 Journal of Educational Computing Research 62(7)

Author Biographies
Dr. Yu-Chi Chen is a Postdoctoral researcher of Applied Science and Technology,
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. His particular research
interests include game-based learning, gamification and educational mind tools.
Prof. Huei-Tse Hou is a Distinguished Professor of Graduate Institute of Applied
Science and Technology, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology,
Taiwan. He is also the Director of Mini-Educational Game development Group in
E-learning Research Center in National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
(NTUSTMEG). His research interest focuses on gamification, behavioral pattern
analysis, and game-based learning and gamification for education.