Javier Melero

Orchestration signals in the classroom: managing the Jigsaw collaborative learning flow

The orchestration of collaborative learning processes in face-to-face physical settings, such as classrooms, requires teachers to coordinate students indicating them who belong to each group, which collaboration areas are assigned to each group, and how they should distribute the resources or roles within the group. In this paper we present an Orchestration Signal system, composed of wearable Personal Signal devices and an Orchestration Signal manager. Teachers can configure color signals in the manager so that they are transmitted to the wearable devices to indicate different orchestration aspects. In particular, the paper describes how the system has been used to carry out a Jigsaw collaborative learning flow in a classroom where students received signals indicating which documents they should read, in which group they were and in which area of the classroom they were expected to collaborate. The evaluation results show that the proposed system facilitates a dynamic, visual and flexible orchestration.

Transforming the Campus into a Digitally Augmented Learning Space Using etiquetAR

etiquetAR is a web-authoring application designed towards learning purposes to support practitioners in the design of activities based on QR codes. This poster illustrates how etiquetAR QR codes were used to augment a University Campus as a support for a gamified tag-based learning activity. The QR codes generated change its behavior depending on the profile of the student interacting with the tag. The results show the successful application of etiquetAR in a real educational context.

Considerations for the Design of Mini-games Integrating Hints for Puzzle Solving ICT-Related Concepts

Educational games have been proved to be learning environments that are more in correspondence with new generation of students since they can provide successful learning and motivate students in their learning process. In this line, several studies describe the main factors that games should have in order to design engaging learning experiences. Taking into account these factors, this paper presents the design of three different game-based learning environments providing hints for puzzle solving different tasks within the area of computer architecture, programming fundamentals, and computing networks. An evaluation carried out with secondary and higher education students provides further considerations regarding the design of hints, score, and supportive learning material that should be taken into account when creating such kind of games.

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

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.

Teachers Can Be Involved in the Design of Location-based Learning Games

Recent research in the Game-Based Learning domain shows that location-based games can lead to positive effects in studentsâ?? motivation and engagement. However, the potential effectiveness of these approaches depends on to what extent their design is aligned with the requirements of specific educational situations. For this reason, involving teachers in the design of their own location-based learning games becomes crucial to fulfil their teaching requirements. This paper presents a metaphor based on puzzle boards as a technique to involve teachers in the design of their own location-based games. A design-based research methodology has been followed to evaluate the proposed metaphor. Previous research experiments have shown the feasibility of the puzzle-based games approach to allow secondary education teachers the design of these types of learning experiences. However, some issues in terms of understanding specific elements of the proposed metaphor were detected. A second iteration of the research methodology is described in the paper to evaluate the changes made to the definitions of the metaphorâ??s elements and the dynamics of the game design task. The evaluation is carried out with 20 primary and secondary education teachers who completed a paper-based design task. The main findings show that teachers did not have problems using the proposed metaphor and they successfully designed their own location-based learning games.