WALKABOUT IP – AN APPROACH FOR LEARNING THROUGH CONTEXTUAL MOBILE GAMES

Today’s society assumes its members to be skilled for the 21st century, to have an attitude of lifelong learning while it is constantly and ever faster changing, optimizing the learning process of today’s society members, motivating these learners into active participation in education is the quest of the present learning communities. To facilitate the active participation of the learner who wants to combine this with his/her other lives, education needs to be pervasive. The use of mobile technology implies the ubiquity of interactive and rich multimedia learning environment.
Learning should also imply fun. Therefore, the Walkabout IP project includes serious gaming. Games induce engagement, involvement and fun whereas ‘serious’ indicates the informal learning through playing the game. The same informal learning process occurs when one collaborates in the creative process of building a new game.
Bringing the serious game in a contextual setting makes contextual learning possible. Through the use of intelligent tags, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Near Field Communication (NFC) or even two dimensional barcodes like Quick Response codes (QR), objects in the real world are linked with their virtual double. This mixed reality has the power to transform rich learning content into a rich learning context. As indoor or outdoor locations become interactive environments, learning content is virtually layered upon these locations and accessible through a game. Entering an interactive environment, one is challenged into a game, becoming immersed in an informal learning process, where contextual content is passed on to the player through interaction.
The aim of this research work is to present a development framework and methodology for contextual learning mobile games systems that enable learners to practice and enhance 21st century skills, while generating and playing mobile contextual games. To do so, the Walkabout IP assembles students in the creation of serious and contextual mobile games. Based on a social constructivist view they will collaborate in international and interdisciplinary teams.
Students will start from a proof of concept game system consisting of two components: a web-service and master database that contains all information for the game (user accounts, multimedia files, tag information, scores, rules, ...), and a mobile client and local database. This client replicates the master database information, presents the game UI and multimedia files and interprets the game rules. Students will study the game system, propose a learning contextual scenario and add functionalities to the initial prototype.
The main focus of this project is not the IT part, but the content creation and the interdisciplinary tasks that create an opportunity for different profile students to cooperate. By focusing on that synergy, we can transcend the purely technically aspect and make the IP effectively work. Within this IP the mobile devices are used to enhance the behaviourist learning process. The use of mobile devices to present teaching materials/content specific questions (stimulus), obtain responses from learners (response), and provide appropriate feedback (reinforcement) fits within the behaviourist learning paradigm. Additionally, the organization of the students in multicultural and multidisciplinary working groups incentives the acquisition and transfer of knowledge.