Antonio Farias

A Framework like a tool for specify motivating Collaborative Learning Participatory Simulations

Several research efforts suggest that collaborative participatory simulations improve teaching and learning, increasing motivation inside the classroom. Currently, it has been mainly applied with students of primary and secondary educational levels, leaving higher level students aside. This paper presents a framework for implementing Participatory Simulations, where social interactions and motivational effects are the main facilitators. An instance of this framework was implemented for business school undergraduate students. Its implementation is simple, lightweight, fully based on pen-based, and designed to work with handhelds over an ad-hoc wireless network.

Developing Motivating Collaborative Learning Through Participatory Simulations

Participatory simulations are collaborative group learning activities whose goals are to improve teaching and learning, increasing motivation inside the classroom by engaging the learner in games simulating a certain system they have to learn about. It has been already applied to students of primary and secondary educational levels, however there are still not experiences reported with higher level students, although there are many learning subjects to which this technique can be applied. This paper presents the implementation of a framework-like tool for supporting learning activities in a business school with undergraduate students using mobile devices over an ad-hoc network.

A Platform Supporting the Implementation of Collaborative Learning through Participatory Simulations

Student motivation is a key aspect in achieving successful collaborative learning. In the past, some techniques which help to engage the students in a motivating learning activity have been proposed. Among them, Participatory Simulation is one of the newest. In Participatory Simulations, social interaction and motivational effects are the main facilitators. In this work, we present an easy-to-use framework that facilitates the development of mobile computing applications implementing this technique. The use of this framework leads to the development of lightweight peer-to-peer applications for handheld computers with interfaces fully based on pen interaction, and designed to work with handhelds over an ad-hoc wireless network. This paper also shows the development of an application oriented toward the last-year business school undergraduate students for support in learning the concepts of reputation and trust based on the customers experience and knowledge generated by a companys performance during a good or bad experience.