Re-purposing existing generic games and simulations for e-learning

Abstract

There is a growing interest among teachers in using games as a part of their lesson plans. A standardised, interoperable approach to the sharing of such game-based lesson plans would allow teachers and educational technologists to compare and contrast Digital Game Based Learning scenarios, allowing best practices and lessons learned to emerge. Although games can be used as 'add-ons' in educational contexts, greater benefits can be attained by integrating games more fully into the educational process, i.e. by repurposing existing games to target the specific learning objectives. In this article we analyse this problem. We developed two possible solutions based on the integration and the interaction of games and learning scenarios. The first solution is based on 'pedagogical wrappers', where games are linked to e-learning flows but without interaction and communication. The second solution sees a tighter integration which supports ongoing interaction and communication between game and e-learning flow. We applied both solutions to a generic game. This game was firstly programmed in Action Script and later re-used for learning purposes and represented in IMS Learning Design. We analysed the pros and cons of each solution and identify research topics for further research.

Nuevas tendencias en el proceso de formación y mentoría de profesores universitarios noveles en su primer año de docencia

“…Los juegos fortalecen los procesos cognitivos y mejoran ciertas habilidades y capacidades, ofrecen retroalimentación en tiempo de ejecución y permiten que el fl ujo de aprendizaje se adapte sobre la marcha. También proporcionan un buen vehículo para establecer relaciones sociales (BURGOS, TATTERSALL;KOPER, 2007).…”

Authoring game-based adaptive units of learning with IMS Learning Design and <e-Adventure>

“…On the other hand, closer integration allows for pedagogical improvements as well as a better contextualised learning path (Richards, 2005;Burgos et al, 2006c). In this approach, the activity previous to the Activity-Game can provide some input to the game.…”

“…The main goal is to make the game a fully integrated activity within the whole learning process, instead of remaining an isolated stand-alone resource (Provenzo, 1991;Gee, 2005). In doing so, generic games, as well as specific educational games, can be used as an interlaced element throughout the learning experience, thus increasing the educational threshold (Burgos et al, 2006c).…”

Intelligent tutoring Module for a 3Dgame-based science e-learning platform

“…Some researchers investigated various instructional strategies in the game-based learning [31], [11], [14], [44], [50]. Leisure game industry has established a series of unified standards in the product process, but for serious games for learning the situation still suffers from fragment and lack of coherence, therefore lots of efforts [31], [25], [5], [47], [15], [43], [51] were invested to study the system design and development of the game-based learning system platforms. Up to now, a broad range of curricula have been redesigned for game-based learning environments [24], [28], [44], [35], [12].…”