Design and Implementation of Location-Based Learning Games: Four Case Studies with “QuesTInSitu: The Game”

Abstract

Over the past few years the use of educational games for learning purposes has reported many educational benefits in terms of students' motivation and engagement towards learning. One of the challenges in the research field of Game-Based Learning (GBL) is to create or adapt educational games to teachers' requirements depending on their particular situations. An approach to face this problem is to provide teachers with strategies that allow them to design meaningful games for their learning scenarios. To address this issue, a metaphor has been proposed for supporting teachers in the design of the so-called location-based learning games. In this study, we describe four real learning contexts, including 16 secondary education teachers use the proposed metaphor to design their own location-based games. Besides, in order to gain meaningful insights about the impact of the designed games in students' satisfaction, we deployed the teachers' designs in "QuesTInSitu: The Game". A total of 253 students from the 4 secondary schools played the designed games. The main findings derived from the evaluation with teachers and students provide meaningful insights about main considerations when designing and deploying location-based learning games for outdoors and indoors.

Design Thinking's Resources for in-situ Co-Design of Mobile Games

“…In [11] four experiences of the QuesTInSitu game are presented. This game provides location educational questions (which are created by teachers and located using a map).…”

Mobile Learning Applications: Exploring Location Sensing Mechanisms

“…When this application detects that user is near to a one of these beacon, he/she receives augmented reality information related to that place. On the other hand, in [11] are shown Location-based Learning Applications for indoor and outdoor spaces. These applications use Google Map for outdoor spaces [12] and GPS as a location sensing mechanism, while for indoor spaces are used static images and locations (for these spaces) are indicated manually by the students.…”

“…These applications use Google Map for outdoor spaces [12] and GPS as a location sensing mechanism, while for indoor spaces are used static images and locations (for these spaces) are indicated manually by the students. That is to say, in [11] for the indoor spaces are using an indirect sensing mechanism; until students do not indicate where they are, the information related to their current location is not updated. So, the description mentioned above indicates Location-based Learning Applications could be use different types of sensing mechanisms to determine student's location, some direct and others indirect [5].…”

“…This conceptual framework uses the vision of separation of concerns (used in Software Engineering) to address co-design, in which at least teachers and technology experts are involved. On the other hand, in [11] is proposed to design these applications using the puzzle metaphor. The pieces are built, and then there are converted to XML files [15] to generate functional applications.…”

“…The pieces are built, and then there are converted to XML files [15] to generate functional applications. In [11] is describe how this metaphor is used and shown how to use the generated applications. The authors mention in [11] that metaphors, in general, are widely used in the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to be able to handle unknown contexts from known concepts.…”