New Design Principles for Mobile History Games

ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Educators program, 2006

Augmented Reality (AR) games can potentially teach 21st century skills, such as interpretation, multimodal thinking, problemsolving, information management, teamwork, flexibility, civic engagement, and the acceptance of diverse perspectives. To explore this, I designed Reliving the Revolution (RtR) as a novel model for evaluating educational AR games. RtR takes place in Lexington, Massachusetts, the site of the Battle of Lexington. Participants interact with virtual historic figures and items, which are triggered by GPS to appear on their PDA (personal digital assistant) depending on where they are standing in Lexington. Game participants receive differing evidence, as appropriate for their role in the game (Minuteman soldier, Loyalist, African American soldier, or British soldier), and use this information to decide who fired the first shot at the Battle. Results of initial trials of RtR suggest that AR games, when properly designed for pedagogical purposes, can motivate the authentic practice of 21st century skills.

IEEE Transactions on Games, 2019

The number of video games that are developed based on real historical events and evidence is increasing. These history-based video games provide players learning opportunities, but a certain type of such games-first and third person shooters-has not been carefully examined for their potentials. Knowing what players say about their game experience-even if the information and knowledge are inaccurate-helps researchers understand what type of learning could happen with such games. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach to assessing games as learning environments, using the method of comparing authenticity of popular history-based video games. Through a qualitative data analysis, we studied players' comments on the web-based communication services, such as game forums, digital distribution platforms, and discussion websites. Casual players' conversations on these websites showed that there exist several learning potentials in the games for players including building their understanding about history and historical forces of the time, through personally relating to the specific events, social artifacts, and places.

International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 2018

2009 International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics, 2009

Digital games, an interactive technology can foster learning process effectively and interestingly especially among young learners. Digital Game Based Learning (DGBL) approach utilizes the game as a medium for conveying learning contents. The area of educational technology is still lacking of research on how to design game environment that foster knowledge construction and deepen understanding and problem solving while engaging and entertaining the player at the same time. The learning outcome need to be integrated as a goal from the start of the design process and pedagogy need to be formally incorporated into games. In this paper, we reviewed features of educational game design and history learning. Then, we discuss the application of pedagogical elements in educational game design. The result is a history game design model and level design for History Multimedia Interactive Educational Game (HMIEG). The model consists of four main elements: interaction, knowledge, engine and level. The history educational game design model integrates the pedagogical elements and game design features to ensure HMIEG can be used as a history learning tool effectively.

International Journal of Learning Technology, 2020

History education ordinarily faces a relativist slant, if not by the monotonous nature of the course. Hence, educators are continuously in pursuit for a better teaching strategy to keep the class interesting. The main goal of this study was to 'bring history to life' through a mobile application powered by augmented reality that can provide an immersive storytelling experience on the American Colonisation Period in the Philippines. Outlined as a second quarter lesson in K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum for Social Studies by the Department of Education, the Historic Augmented Reality Application (HARA) depicts the: 1) Battle of Manila Bay; 2) Mock Battle of Manila; 3) First Shot in Philippine-American War. Through a participatory approach, co-designers evaluated HARA in terms of pedagogical value (knowledge acquisition, acceptability, motivation, and attitude), and quality standards (effectiveness, satisfaction, and efficiency) through a usability inspection method. The iterative nature of the project development via a co-design approach with end users revealed early bugs, shortcomings, and possible improvements on the app. The rest is history!

PhD Dissertation, 2021

For decades there has been a call for educators to explore new possibilities for meeting educational goals defined broadly under a number of twenty-first century competencies curricula (Dede, 2014; Voogt et al., 2013). These stress the need for students to combine critical skills development with an understanding of the processes and reach of technologies in daily life, in order to prepare them for a shifting cultural and economic landscape. In response, an extensive literature has grown up about game-based learning (Brown, 2008; de Castell, 2011; Gee, 2003; Gee and Hayes, 2011; Jenson, Taylor, de Castell, 2011; Jenson et al., 2016; Kafai, 1995; 2012; 2016; Prensky, 2001; Squire, 2004; 2011; Steinkuehler, 2006) that seeks to explore whether/how games can be used productively in education. History as a discipline lends itself particularly well to game-based learning. It is bound up in questions of interpretation, agency, and choice, considerations that gameplay and game design as processes highlight well. My research explores the uses of digital historical games in history education, and most especially in the acquisition of critical historical skills. These skills are defined as the capacity to view and engage with the constitutive parts of historical scholarship and objects: interpretation, argument, evidence, ideology, subject position, class, race, sex, etc. This thesis will present findings from two participant-based research studies that I organized and ran between 2018 and 2019. In the first, participants were tasked with playing a counterfactual historical game, Fallout 4, and talking about their experiences, as well as answering questions about history and historical understandings. The second study took the form of an interactive digital history course. In it, students, working in small groups, were tasked with creating their own historical games. Exploring both gameplay and game production answers the call issued by Kafai and Burke (2016) that researchers should view the potential for games in education holistically, rather than in either/or terms. Taken together, this thesis argues that playing and especially making historical games offers opportunities for learners to engage with epistemological concepts in history in meaningful ways that can advance their critical understanding of history as a subject.

Video Games are increasingly being seen as a valid method of teaching, and this Undergraduate Dissertation attempts to distinguish different methods used within video games to convey historical information, and their values within historical education.

Computers & Education, 2009

A mobile and multimedia game designed for History education was analyzed in terms of how it is designed and how it was applied as a narrative learning environment. In History education, narrative can be argued to be very useful to overcome fragmentation of the knowledge of historical characters and events, by relating these with meaningful connections of temporality and sequence (storification). In the game studied, students explore the history of Amsterdam by walking in the city, experiencing characters, buildings, and events, while using UMTS/GPS phones for communication and exchange of information. The History game was played during one day by 216 students, spread over 10 secondary school classes, in groups of four or five students. All information exchanged during the games was collected, and the game play and introduction of the game was observed by team coaches and researchers. The design of the game as well as the actual gaming process was analyzed with respect to how it evoked three types of storification: receiving (spectator), constructing (director) and participating in (actor) the story. Results show that the game evoked a mixture of these three types of storification. Moreover, these types of storification processes differently affected students' engagement. Participating in the story evoked high activity in the game but less awareness of the whole story, whereas constructing the story triggered awareness of the whole story. Compared to receiving the story, both these types positively affected the engagement of the students being active and motivated during the game.

On the Move to …, 2010

This paper presents a mobile system that supports young students learning history at an archaeological site. It adopts gameplay as a novel and effective technique particularly suited for learning through mobile systems (mlearning). From a technological point of view, the main novelty of our system is its slim architecture. Minimal investments are required because the system runs on the students' own cellular phones. Experimental studies indicate that gameplay is able to trigger a desire to learn more about ancient history and to make archaeological visits more exciting and learning about the past more effective.

The present study aims to examine prospective history teachers' process of using digital games to design history lessons and delivering the designed lessons in virtual classrooms. The study employed a design-based research model and was conducted with 31 participants selected based on the criterion sampling method. Data were collected through design documents, interview forms, and video recordings and were analyzed using descriptive and content analysis techniques. During the process, participants were able to design history lessons with digital games and deliver the designed lessons in virtual classrooms. Analysis of participants' views on the process led to the emergence of the following themes: "The Problems Emerging in the Process," "The Pedagogical Effects of the Process," "The Technological Effects of the Process," "The Effects of the Process on Reflective Thinking," "The Effects of the Process on Participants' Thoughts about Virtual Learning Settings," and "The Effects of the Process on Participants' Thoughts about the Researcher." The study results show that despite some problems with the use of technology, the process had a positive effect on the participants. In this regard, future studies may be recommended to focus on prospective teachers' competencies in using technology effectively when teaching lessons in virtual learning environments.

Expert Systems with Applications, 2014

Classical pedagogy about Human History has dealt with many historic events as a mere collection of dates, locations and a number of confronted sides with a final result of victory or defeat. In the same line of thinking, many popular battles and wars are not well understood due to non-rigorous treatment in comics, movies and documentaries. In order to fight these drawbacks we propose a novel technologyenhanced pedagogical approach named REENACT which is aimed at engaging groups of people into immersive experiences to improve their learning about historical battles and wars from the points of view of reenactors and historians. To this aim, REENACT relies on handheld devices and an advanced technological facility that comprises social networking features, augmented reality capabilities and repositories of multimedia contents. Our pedagogical approach has been experimentally validated in collaboration with the Foundation of the Hellenic World in Greece and the School of Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Vigo in Spain. The obtained results in terms of Quality of Experience, Quality of Service and Quality of Community reveal the potential value of the approach to provide new edutainment collective experiences which remain unexplored thus far in educational environments.

Education and Information Technologies, 2016

This paper presents a game designed to support teaching and learning of Portuguese History to 6th grade students. Firstly, a state of the art of mobile gamebased learning for History is presented. Then we describe shortly the research carried out which aimed at the analysis of the games most played by students, followed by the identification of the learning principles proposed by Paul Gee and the game mechanics to propose a game structure. Data was collected from students in the 2nd cycle of the Portuguese Educational System (n = 508) through a questionnaire. Finally, we describe the game, that was developed based on those findings, related to a Portuguese historical event-the Republic Implementation in 1910.

2015

We present work on a tablet and smartphonebased Augmented Reality game application for learning Philippine History. This paper highlights the design of the game application with regards to its educational content, game mechanics, and user interface, discussing how these elements combine to enjoin players to learn about Philippine history while visiting the actual historical locations situated in Intramuros, Manila.

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E-Learning and Digital Media, 2019

This article approaches games from the perspectives of design and analysis in order to describe how games might employ pedagogical strategies that capitalize on their strengths as interactive media while avoiding the pitfalls of traditional learning games. Specifically, it draws attention to how games employ world building through lore-such as through item text descriptions-as well as affective game design aesthetics to create a learning experience closer in similarity to touring a museum than reading a textbook. Describing this phenomenon as the interactive museum, the article discusses how the concept operates through an analysis of the game Valiant Hearts: The Great War. The article first addresses games as teaching tools, including their potential to teach about historical wars, while paying close attention to the ethical dilemma of producing an entertaining game that also aims to teach. The design analysis begins by examining item text descriptions, lore and historical world building before describing the affective aesthetic of the interactive museum. The article concludes with a discussion on games' potential use of tangential learning as a method to teach through interactivity.