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22 Int'l J. Educ. Tech. Higher Educ. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/intjedth22 and id is 1 raw text is: Zhong etal. IntiEduc TechnolHigh Educ (2025)22:1 https-//doi.org/10.1186/s41239-024-00500-2 International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access From gaming to reality: effectiveness of skills transfer from competitive sandbox gaming environment to near and far contexts Yuchun Zhong1 , Luke Kutszik Fryer' Shiyue Zheng2 , Alex Shuml and Samuel Kai Wah Chu3 *Correspondence: sunnyzhong33@connect.hku.hk Faculty of Education (TAUC), The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Faculty o Education and Human Development, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China s Department of Health Sciences, School of Nursing and Health Sciences, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong, China SpringerOpen Abstract Esports or competitive video gaming has been increasingly utilized to enhance essential twenty-first century skills. However, there is limited evidence on the extent to which the skills acquired from a gaming environment can be transferred to other settings. This study employed an experimental design to investigate the effectiveness of a competitive sandbox game environment in enabling the transfer of the 4Cs skills to both near and far tasks, in contrast with a non-game environment. A cohort of 110 students from a university were randomly allocated to both conditions for the 4Cs skills training.The skills transferability was measured through self reports, observa- tions, and interviews. The findings indicated no significant differences in the transfer of creativity, critical thinking, and communication skills in near and far settings fol- lowing both training environments. Interestingly, a competitive gaming environment significantly facilitated the transfer of collaboration skills to near tasks evidenced by performance-based assessments. Moreover, although the hypotheses 1 c and 3c were not statistically supported, the small to medium effect size suggests that there were practical differences between the groups in self reported collaboration skills in near and far tasks. Additionally, analysis of individual interviews with 41 participants indicated that the successful transference was attributed to an array of scaffolds (i.e., mentorship, collaborative problem-solving environment, autonomy, and guided checklists) while the failure to detect positive effects was explained by various con- straints (i.e., unfamiliarity with game rules, limited time, lack of practice, and established cognitive patterns).These findings add new insights into the literature on game-based learning and transfer of learning and inform researchers to further investigate the lon- gitudinal effect of skills transfer and retention in both academic and professional spheres. Keywords: 4Cs skills, Esports, Sandbox game, Competitive gaming environment, Skills transfer, Experimental design Introduction Esports or electronic sports, also known as competitive video gaming (Jenny et al., 2017) has caught enormous scholarly interest in recent years (Scholz, 2020). Different from educational games that often face criticism for simple designs that are narrowly focused ©The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the articles Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the mate- rial. If material is not included in the articles Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.To view a copy of this licence, visit httpy/ creativecomrnons.org/ licenses/by,4.0/.

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