Mobile Learning Games (MLGs) show great potential for education, especially in fields that deal with outdoor learning activities such as archaeology or botany. However, the number of MLGs currently used remains insignificant. This is partly due to the fact that the current authoring tools are based on modeling languages that only allow creating very specific and rigid types of MLGs. In this paper, we therefore propose an extensive modeling language for MLGs. This model was designed, with the help of botanical experts, in order to cover the variety of MLG types they would like for their field trips. This modeling language uses highlevel concepts, such as game activities and points of interest on a map that can therefore be used by teachers in any domain. Finally, we discuss how scenarios, described with this language, can be automatically transformed into executable web applications.

Students and schools are increasingly equipped with smartphones and tablets. These mobile devices can enhance teaching in many ways. Mobile Learning Games (MLGs) for example, have shown great potential for increasing student's motivation and improving the quality of situated learning. For the past few years, the research community has been working on authoring tools that allow teachers to create and distribute their own MLGs. The development of these authoring tools is challenging and time consuming and even more so if the objective is for these tools to actually be used in classrooms. The Design-Based Research (DBR) paradigm was precisely developed to address these central issues of Technology Enhanced Learning. It involves co-designing and testing with end-users from the beginning of the project. Although DBR increases the acceptance of new educational tools, it also adds several challenges, including the complexity of involving teachers and students in real-world situations and creating several versions of the tools that will be improved iteratively. In this paper, we aim at providing design principles and practical guidance on the way to develop such authoring tools, based on our experience. We conclude on lessons learned from this project and discuss some systematic issues we faced.

Mobile learning games (MLGs) have great potential in education, especially in fields requiring outdoors activities such as botany or cultural heritage education. However, the number of mobile learning games actually used for outdoor education remains very low. The absence of dedicated applications allowing to build MLGs, without technical expertise, is certainly one of the most important factors. To overcome this limitation, we propose a design method for MLG authoring tools, based on reusable components. We describe in this paper the design and first results of Moggle-Designer, a full-web MLG authoring tool requiring no technical expertise. We detail how a model-based approach, combined with component-oriented programming, adequately allow the representation and manipulation of didactic expert knowledge. Finally, we present Moggle-Player, an application for running the designed MLGs on any mobile browser. Moggle-Designer was used to design several mobile games that have been tested during a pilot study in a botanical park.

No abstract

The development of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, has led to a new kind of learning environments: ubiquitous learning environments. These environments are particularly interesting in the framework of school learning in museum, as they permit to provide learning content to students, adapted to their positions and interests. The students are free to move in the museum and the ubiquitous learning environment provides authentic learning situations. These environments are thus an alternative to classics guided tours which limit drastically the freedom of visit (for instance, during a guided tour, it is not possible to contemplate an artwork as long as you want).We present in this paper the design of an ubiquitous learning environment named CALM (ContextuAlized Learning in Mobility), for school learning during museum visits. In CALM as well as in other ubiquitous environment, the main challenge is to reconcile the freedom of movement and action, that characterizes authentic situations, with pedagogical control by the teacher, necessarily limiting this freedom. Our system aims to provide learners with situated interactions, while giving teachers the opportunity to integrate learning objectives that will influence the proposed interactions. We use semantic proximities over a semantic model of the domain (cultural heritage) and context (e.g. position in the museum, activity) to automatically generate contextualized learning activities: artworks suggestion and comparison, serious games based on what the learner has seen. We present the use of semantic rules to enable a loosely-based control of these activities by the teacher (thematic control) together with a fine direct control of proposed activities (contextual control).