Mobile Learning Games (MLGs) show great potential for increasing engagement, creativity and authentic learning. Yet, despite their great potential for education, the use of MLGs by teachers, remains limited. This is partly due to the fact that MLGs are often designed to match a specific learning context, and thus cannot be reusable for other contexts. Therefore, researchers have recently designed various types of MLG authoring tools. However, these authoring tools are not always adapted to non-computer-scientists or non-game-designers. Hence, we propose in this paper to focus on five existing MLG authoring tools, in order to assess their features and usability with the help of five teachers, who are used to organizing educational field trips. In the second part of this paper, we present an approach for designing a MLG authoring tool, based on the lacks identified through the analysis, and tailored to the teachers' different profiles and needs.

The expansion of mobile devices (e.g. tablets, smartphones) and their educational and recreational applications have contributed to the emergence of Mobile Learning Games (MLGs). MLGs show great potential for increasing engagement, creativity and authentic learning. Yet, despite their great potential for education, the use of MLGs by teachers, remains very limited. This is partly due to the fact that MLGs are often designed to match a specific learning context, and thus cannot be directly reused in other situations. In addition, the existing authoring tools are either simple to use but do not offer enough features for designing MLGs that meet the teachers' needs, or much too complex to be used without programming skills. To tackle these problems, we propose JEM Inventor, a MLG authoring tool, based on a nested design approach, progressively revealing functionalities, depending on users' skills and needs. JEM Inventor and its nested design model were evaluated through two experimentations with more than twenty teachers, from a wide range of fields and expertise with the use of MLGs. We also conducted field experimentations with more than 1500 students in order to evaluate the quality of the MLGs created with JEM Inventor as well as their impact on learners.

International audienceUniversity teachers often feel the need to try innovative learning technologies such as Learning Games to motivate the new generation of students. However, the typically limited resources of universities coupled with the high cost of designing and developing Learning Games result in it rarely being feasible to meet this need. To address this challenging problem, we have designed a framework that allows teachers to create their own Learning Games with very little or no help from developers and graphic designers. This framework, tested and validated by several university teachers, is suited to a wide variety of educational fields because it generates Learning Games based on the widely-used case teaching method

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