Identification of a shared answer-making epistemic game in a group context

When physics students engage in collaborative exercises, they must negotiate their different problem-solving strategies in order to work together effectively. One lens through which to understand these interactions is the construct of "epistemic games". These constructs have been used to describe particular methods of problem solving with which students are observed to engage. In prior work, an "answer-making epistemic game" has been observed, wherein the student perceives the objective of the activity as producing an answer, and reasons until they arrive at an answer or intuits an answer and then tries to justify this answer. This game was observed in the context of individual students working independently on multiple-choice questions. We present preliminary analysis of the appearance of a shared answer-making epistemic game when a group of students worked collaboratively on conceptual problems.