=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1734/fmt-proceedings-2016-paper3
|storemode=property
|title=Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1734/fmt-proceedings-2016-paper3.pdf
|volume=Vol-1734
|authors=Simon Reinsperger,Florian Grassinger,Iosif Miclaus,Grischa Schmiedl,Birgit Schmiedl,Kerstin Blumenstein
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/fmt/ReinspergerGMSS16
}}
==Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1734/fmt-proceedings-2016-paper3.pdf
Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
Simon Reinsperger,1 Florian Grassinger,1 Iosif Miclaus,1
Grischa Schmiedl,1 Birgit Schmiedl2 , Kerstin Blumenstein1
1
St. Poelten University of Applied Sciences, Austria
2
HLW Pressbaum, Austria
ences. For example, the success of the mobile game
“Pokemon Go”1 shows the fascination location-aware
Abstract applications have on people, regardless of gender, age
or education [Tak16]. The same enthusiasm could be
The state of technology is evolving each year, used to enhance learning experiences.
computers get faster and smaller and more
This paper investigates how such a tool could look
and more parts of society get enhanced with
like and which requirements, use cases and limits of
it. Education is one of these areas that could
such applications exist. The method consists of a
benefit from the progress made in technology.
literature research to investigate the current state of
This paper explores the possibilities and ben-
location-based learning games (Section 2) and tools for
efits of mobile location-based learning games
creating such games (Section 3). The second part con-
and tools for creating such applications. We
sists of the development of a prototype as a proof of
built a web platform for creating location-
concept and the evaluation through user tests (Section
based content. The development process and
4 and 5). Finally, we conclude our work in Section 6
design considerations to expand the function-
and outline future work.
ality for creating context-based games will be
documented in this paper. Finally, the results
of two user tests will be presented. Both tests
were conducted with primary school children 2 Location-Based Learning Games
to focus on use cases in the educational sys-
tem. Location-based games require players to move through
the physical world in order to achieve certain game
objectives. Real objects or locations get connected
1 Introduction with virtual information, which is accessible through
The use of technology for educational purposes is not a the players mobile device. This kind of games is
new idea. However, it definitely has more to o↵er than very flexible concerning the content and is predestined
what it is used for right now. Almost every student for educational use cases [SYOA+ 14]. Location-based
uses smartphones and at the age of 4 already 75% of systems do not necessarily require location-awareness.
all children carry such a high-end computer in their There are multiple examples of location-based learn-
pockets [KIND+ 15]. The possibilities to use these de- ing applications which do not monitor or react to
vices in school do not end with playing casual games the users’ physical location due to the available hard-
during a break. The field of mobile computing and ware at that time. Nowadays, most projects work
especially mobile learning is more and more investi- location-aware, in the sense that the system knows
gated and context-aware computing is a big opportu- the current location of its user [BBS+ 10]. All three
nity to develop and interact with software. Particu- following examples use GPS (global positioning sys-
larly, location-based applications promise an appeal- tem) for locating the users. There are other possibili-
ing approach for creating interesting learning experi- ties as well, e.g., tracking the position via WiFi signal
strength [CT09] or using QR code and RFID to con-
Copyright c by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted for firm a location [TKK+ 09].
private and academic purposes.
In: W. Aigner, G. Schmiedl, K. Blumenstein, M. Zeppelzauer
(eds.): Proceedings of the 9th Forum Media Technology 2016, 1 http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-video-games/
St. Pölten, Austria, 24-11-2016, published at http://ceur-ws.org pokemon-go/, accessed 26.07.2016.
23
Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
2.1 Business Education the game is about surviving as a lion, which includes
hunting, drinking, staying away from trouble, man-
Puja & Parsons [PP11] explored the possibilities for
aging their energy, etc. Each player carries a PDA
using a location-based mobile game for teaching col-
with GPS functionality and headphones. The devices
lege students about business consulting. The game
transform the playing field into the savanna by show-
is played in teams. The players goal is to analyze a
ing images and playing sounds according to the play-
virtual company, as if they were business consultants
ers’ position. The device also receives and displays
and form a recommendation for the company based
messages like “you are too hot”, “you are hungry” or
on their findings and conclusions. The students have
“you are dead - return to the Den”. These messages
to find di↵erent virtual interview partners each repre-
let the players know about their state in the game.
senting another infrastructural part of the company.
These interview partners are bound to certain loca-
tions on the campus. Once the players are in a certain 2.4 Insights from the Examples
range to these locations the interview text appears on Looking at these examples, some insights can be ob-
the device. After all locations are found and the stu- tained about the current state of location-based learn-
dents have obtained all accessible information, they ing games. The use cases are very broad, the examples
prepare a final presentation about their findings and reach from games for children to college education and
analysis. The user test showed some issues with the the fields of interests were historical, biological and
user interface e.g., difficulties in finding their orienta- economical. Thus, location-based learning games are
tion with only a dot on an abstracted map. Another unbiased regarding target audience and content.
discovery was that they actually spent little time read-
The structure of these games often share certain
ing the interviews and documents. The players rated
similarities, like the process of going to a location, re-
the progress bar as very useful, as a reference of their
trieving information about the next location once the
success. However, this resulted in consuming more at-
players’ presence is confirmed and so on. Overall, all
tention from the participants than anticipated.
user tests confirm a positive e↵ect on the motivation
2.2 History Learning of the players and their learning experience.
Wake & Baggetun [WB09] developed a location-based
mobile learning game to teach students about local his- 3 Requirements
tory in Bergen, Norway. The players take the role of Many location-based learning applications follow the
Premier Lieutenant Bielke, who managed the defense same structure. The user has to go to a certain place
of Bergen during the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815), and to acquire some new information, based on that they
visit historic sites in the town to learn more about have to find the next location. Having such a repet-
this historical episode. This concept follows the idea itive pattern makes it easy to create tools to man-
of place-based education, where problems and learn- age the content of such a learning experience or even
ing opportunities are based on the students’ own sur- create new ones without having programming skills.
roundings from that applying the learned information This kind of application could, for example, be used
on a global perspective. The game is played in teams, by teachers to create interactive, location-based con-
which are competing for the lowest score (finishing the tent for their classes, benefiting from all the previous
game as fast with as few hints provided by the system mentioned advantages, without the need for expen-
as possible). A user test with three teams of three sive projects to create individual location-based learn-
people was conducted, each team sharing one GPS- ing games for only one use case [SYOA+ 14]. Keeping
capable mobile device. The participants reported a such content up-to-date is another advantage of having
clear understanding of the game and knew how to use an underlying - easy to use - system [WHC+ 06]. Of
the system. During the questionnaire, the authors course, the individuality of game features developed
found that the distance meter was a crucial tool for with such a tool will not be guaranteed and complex
the success of the game, the map and hints were rated applications like “Savanna” [FJS+ 04] can not be real-
lower. ized with such a generic structure.
Weal et al. [WHC+ 06] worked with teachers and
2.3 Understanding of Animal Behavior curators and defined requirements for authoring tools
Savannah [FJS+ 04] is a game where children (aged of location-based content as follows:
11 to 12) can take the role of a lion in the wild.
The game is a rather complex role-playing simulation, • The process has to fit existing practices, must
where the players can move freely in a predefined area be fast, simple and achievable in-between daily
(100m ⇥ 50m) and decide their own actions. Basically, chores and when new ideas come to mind.
24
Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
• In-situ authoring should be provided, esp., if the maintenance necessary for the tool to work. However,
mobile experience created is essentially connected none of the found projects described such a possibil-
to the real environment. The content providers ity. The described project in this paper follows this
will benefit from the possibility of creating the approach.
content exactly where it will be consumed.
• It should always be possible to go back and refine 4 Development
the already created content. This kind of work
does not have to be in-situ because it will prob- Mobilot2 is a web platform for creating location-based
ably be more time consuming and reflective than content. Users can create “Mobiduls”, modules where
a spontaneous note. This might even profit from they can mark arbitrary locations (“stations”) on a
having to use another working environment like a map, add media or text and publish such collections.
desktop computer to get another view. The software has some additional functionality, like
collaborative content editing, which supports use cases
3.1 In-Situ Authoring where multiple users can contribute to a collection of
locations, e.g., a collection of all ATMs in a town or a
In-situ authoring allows the creation of content di- city guide. The application is solely web based, even
rectly in the situation when being on sight on a mo- so the design is highly responsive and optimized for
bile device. The other approach would be to require mobile usage. Each feature can easily be accessed on
some kind of static desktop application. Weal at mobile devices. Therefore, in-situ authoring and cre-
al. [WHC+ 06] faced the challenge of needing a system ation is ensured.
to record audio files for a location-based tour through
a historic place and the guides were not able to authen- 4.1 Technical Stack
tically narrate their stories away from the location. As
a solution, they build a mobile application which al-
lows the guides to record their snippets for their tour
directly on their PDAs, neglecting audio quality for a
more authentic experience [WHC+ 06].
3.2 Authoring Versus Playing Application
In the examined prototypes, the design of the author-
ing tools and the normal consumer functionality is ap-
proached in one out of two ways. Either, the design-
ers developed two completely separated applications,
one for consuming and one for creating location-based
content, or they followed the approach of being able to
create and change the minimum of each location, but
big changes need to happen on a di↵erent environment
(e.g., on a desktop computer). Figure 1: Graphical representation of the architecture.
An example for the first solution is the game “Pre-
mierløytnant Bielke” [WB09]. The authors developed
The architecture of Mobilot can be seen in Figure 1.
a web interface to easily change the content of each
The back-end (server) is implemented with the PHP
location, allowing non-technical users to maintain and
MVC framework Laravel, version 4.2, with a MYSQL
update the content, while the game was implemented
database. The back-end architecture (server) is mainly
as a native mobile application.
a typical REST API with CRUD (Create, Read, Up-
The second approach is implemented by Weal et
date, Delete) functionality. This kind of architecture is
al. [WHC+ 06]. It is possible to record audio files on
advantageous for creating multiple client applications
the field but heavier changes still need the desktop
for di↵erent scenarios or devices because the back-end
environment. Another example is the TOTEM appli-
can stay the same.
cation suite [JWBO13]. Jurgelionis et al. created two
The front-end (client) is built with the JavaScript
applications: TOTEM.Designer (desktop application
framework Angular.js 1.4 . This framework is designed
to create data templates) and TOTEM.Scout (mobile
to build big applications as single page applications
application for filling the templates with data in the
(SPA). SPAs technically consist of one page even so it
field).
A third approach would be to enable the mobile 2 The code base is open source and available at https://
application to do all the configuration, creation and github.com/fhstp-mfg/mobilot.
25
Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
does not seem like it. This has some benefits, like an
overall faster experience of the site. Instead of heavy
page loads, the applications have to request data only
when needed, saving a lot of overhead in HTTP re-
quests. On the downside, there can be a possible slow
initial loading of the page when the user visits the page
for the first time because the complete application gets
loaded at once.
The map feature of Mobilot is realized with the
Google Maps API inside the front-end application.
Figure 2: The current (activated) station in the first
4.2 Goals, Ambitions and Challenges line is station 4 (blue). All previous stations are
completed (green) and all future stations are hidden
The existing functionality of Mobilot lets users al- (white). Then, a player triggers an action to set the
ready easily create location-based content. However, current state open (yellow). The station will reveal
the content was rather static and non-interactive itself. some new information as well as an interaction compo-
To use the platform in a learning context, we needed nent. Finally, once the user has completed the station,
some new features to encourage learners to get active. the next station will be activated.
We came up with the idea of extending the existing
features to make it possible to easily and fast create
scavenger hunt-like learning games. The basic func- Each station starts in hidden state. Hidden stations
tionality was already in place, the game itself would are not visible on the map or in any list. If players try
be a Mobidul created by some kind of game master, to access it directly they will be redirected to the cur-
like a teacher, and the stations would be the di↵erent rently active station. Once the previous station is com-
points of the scavenger hunt. We needed some way pleted the station will be activated. Now, the station
to give stations di↵erent kind of states (like ‘hidden’, is visible on the map. In this state players can get chal-
‘open’ or ‘completed’) and only display those who have lenged to do something in order to proceed with the
already been unlocked. game, e.g. finding the station. Afterwards, the station
Another feature, we wanted to implement, was a set can be opened. Technically, the open state is equal to
of interactive components to enable users to configure the previous one. The usage of this state is optional
the scavenger hunt more freely and create their own but allows new possibilities for game elements. After
rules on how the unlocking of stations would work. this, the player will continue with the next station.
These components should be easily configured to the Finally, a finished station will stay in the completed
need of the situations. state. This allows displaying information that should
It was very important to focus on maintaining the be accessible after playing the game.
mobile and in-situ authoring possibilities of a Mobidul.
Therefore, we were challenged not only to create such 4.4 Interaction Components
highly configurable scavenger hunts but also ensuring
The scavenger hunt Mobidules o↵er several inter-
the mobile use of the editor.
action elements for configuring a station. Each of
Additionally, we wanted to transform the existing
these elements o↵ers custom configuration capabilities
web application into a hybrid version. On the one
(e.g., the label on a button or the range of a GPS
hand, it will allow us to use native functionality of
tracking component) and a call to action in case it
mobile devices, which could not be used with a web-
gets triggered.
based application, like access to the Bluetooth chip.
On the other hand, we can deploy the application on
• HTML Content: is a very basic non-interactive
PlayStore by Google and AppStore by Apple, to be
component for creating simple text and images
discoverable on those platforms.
with a WYSIWYG (“What you see is what you
get”) editor.
4.3 Di↵erent States of a Station
• Action Button: is a simple button to trigger an
The first step to create a scavenger hunt-like expe- action if clicked. The label and action are config-
rience is to di↵erentiate between various states of a urable.
station (see Figure 2). Instead of showing the same • Code Input Field: is an input field with a sub-
information regardless of the context of the user, we mit button. Players will have to enter the correct
introduced four di↵erent kinds of conditions with their code in order to trigger the success action. An
own rules each station could be in. error action is also implemented.
26
Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
• GPS Detector: If a station is configured with
a GPS detector it will check the players’ position
every five seconds. If the user is within a con-
figurable range an action will be triggered. As
a fallback, in case of an inaccurate GPS signal,
there will be a code input component to trigger
the action anyway.
• Countdown: Opening a station with a count-
down component will start a timer, that will
trigger an action after a specified time.
Figure 3: Shows the station view of an Mobidul owner
with editing permits. The edit button and the devel-
4.4.1 Actions
oper tools are visible.
To create interactive learning experiences, it is nec-
essary to configure custom responses to user inputs.
While some components allow the declaration of two
actions, one for success, one for failure, most work
with only one of them. The following actions can be
triggered:
• Open this station: will set the status of the
currently active station to “open”.
• Complete this station: will set the currently
active station as completed and the next station
as activated. This action can also be used in acti-
vated state, which will result in skipping the open
state.
• Say some text: will open a dialog window with
a customizable text. Can be used for hints or
custom error messages.
• Go to current station: will set the progress
to the currently active station. This is useful for
completed stations to allow players to quickly nav-
igate back to the currently active station.
4.5 Editor
The design consideration behind the editor was to Figure 4: The first view of the station editor. If a
make it as easy as possible even on mobile devices. new station is created, each state will already contain
To get to the station editor, one has to either create a HTML element. The user can switch the di↵erent
a new station in the menu or click the edit button in states by clicking on the according tab. The currently
the header at the desired station (see Figure 3). It is selected state is indicated by the blue line underneath
required to have editing permits to do so. the name and the di↵erent font color.
The editor is shown in Figure 4. On top, there are
four tabs with di↵erent options:
For creating a scavenger hunt, the first tab (Base)
• Base: allows changing the name of the station as is primarily important because the game logic is man-
well as its content/configuration. aged here. Each state of the station is separated into
• Place: shows a map for changing the location of its own tab. The editor can change between these by
the station. touching one of the state names (‘activated’, ‘open’
• Categories: lets the owner put the station into and ‘completed’).
one or more categories. Underneath the state tabs, the user can add un-
• Options: allows some additional configuration limited elements to the configuration by clicking on
of the station as well as the option to delete it. the desired component, which will add the element to
the content area underneath. If an already existing
27
Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
element in the content area is selected it will be dis-
played with a blue background. The new component Table 1: Overview of the participant distribution
is going to be placed directly behind of it. among Mobiduls.
Each component has an information and delete but-
ton. By clicking on the “toolbox” further configuration
is possible. Game Male Female Total
There can only be one opened element to save screen Reading Rally 1 8 15 23
space, which is important to think about when design- Reading Rally 2 8 10 18
ing for mobile devices. If the user opens a new element Reading Rally 3 7 2 9
the currently selected one will collapse into the pre- Reading Hike 1 8 14 22
view mode. The order of the elements is changeable Reading Hike 2 8 10 18
with a drag‘n’drop gesture. This is consistently used 39 51 90
throughout the application to change the order of list
items (also used for changing the station order or menu and supervised by the project leaders and develop-
items). ers of the software. The test content, two separated
To save the changes, the user has to click on the games with an objective of practicing reading while
right button in the header. This will redirect him or doing physical activities, was designed by a related
her to the station view. The changes can also be dis- teacher. The distinction between the two test mod-
carded by clicking on the cancel button in the left of ules was based on the age of the participants. Each
the save option. test took about one hour including instructions at the
beginning and a quick group interview at the end.
4.5.1 Developer Tools
As test devices we provided iPhone 5, 6 and 6+ as
To make it easier for Mobidul creators to test their con- well as iPad 2 and iPad mini.
tent, the application o↵ers developer tools to change
their current progress data. These tools can be seen 5.1 Reading Rally (Age 6 to 8)
on Figure 3. They consist of two parts. One - the
connected dots underneath the station name - shows Around the school, there were five stations at well-
which station is currently viewed (the outline and font known places like the car park or the tennis court. The
color gets green). It also allows changing stations participants read instructions on their devices to go to
quickly by clicking one of the other dots. The other a specific station and perform a task. These tasks were
feature is right underneath. User can change the state di↵erent for each station, some were achievable with
of the station by selecting one of the three tabs. The just using the device, others required extra instruction
content will change immediately according to the se- and validation from a station supervisor (see Figure 5).
lection. All tasks ended with receiving a keyword, which had
to be entered to complete the station and activate the
next one.
5 Evaluation
The goal of the evaluation phase was to test the new
game components of the web application. The primary
focus was the user experience of the consuming posi-
tion, not the handling of the content authoring and
configuration.
For this evaluation, two di↵erent tests were con-
ducted. Both of them were qualitative evaluations
with observation followed by group interviews. The
target audience of these tests were elementary school
children from “Volksschule Tullnerbach” in Tullner- Figure 5: Station supervisor instructing the partici-
bach, Austria. pants.
Overall, we had 90 participants aged from 6 to 10
(see Table 1 for the distribution of the participants).
All participants claimed to have experience in working This test was performed with three classes. Two of
with mobile devices. Some of the older ones even own the three classes were regular ones with children aged 6
smartphones themselves. The tests took place on two to 8 (with 23 and 18 participants) and one mixed with
days during a project week at the school and were per- an age range from 6 to 10 (with 9 participants). Each
formed on the school grounds. They were instructed class got separated into three subgroups and each one
28
Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
of these got three test devices. This meant the children friend. Each one of these encounters is represented by
had to share one device with one or two peers. The a station and the children walk the same way as the
groups were accompanied by one of the supervisors, in girl in the story.
case questions or problems occurred. The game consists of ten stations, the walking dis-
The participants were very motivated and rushed tance is about 3km and the children needed about one
from one station to another. However, it was notice- hour to complete it. As a fallback, in case the GPS did
able that the older ones could not immerse as much as not work, there were physical signs attached at each
their younger peers. Therefore, the mood of the mixed station, providing an unlock code (see Figure 6).
class was a little less enthusiastic. The game was de-
signed for younger children. Therefore, an explanation
for this could be that the tasks were too easy and not
challenging.
The children were obviously excited about the eval-
uation devices. They were aware of the cost of the
phones and impressed by the responsibility of carry-
ing them. They did not have any problems handling
the application, which matches their statement to be
experienced in working with smartphones.
Beforehand, it was expected that they would read Figure 6: Participants reading the story at a station.
the instruction in these constellations, but it turned The sign with the fallback code is attached to the lamp
out that one person ended up reading aloud for the post.
whole group. This kid was most times the most con-
fident reader of the class, which made the ambition of
the application a bit pointless, because the idea was Unlike the reading rally, this game can be played
to practice reading. It even hindered insecure students without depending on anything but the smartphone.
wanting to hold the device, so they would avoid having It should be possible for the participants to come back
to read. with their parents and repeat the scavenger hunt with
The game design was well received by the partici- their own devices. Therefore, the interface of the sta-
pants. Especially, the athletic tasks were highly rated tion view is extremely important to be easily under-
and better memorized than the others during the fi- standable without any outside help.
nal interview. The challenge to match numbers with This game got tested with a total of 40 children
letters was probably too abstract for the target group. aged 9 to 10.
From observations it also showed that it was the least During the group interview the students stated that
engaging station of the rally, mostly leading to having the story was appealing. Some children proposed in-
one or two participants solving the task for the whole cluded more media genres like videos to enhance the
group. A preference regarding self-instructed stations experience.
compared to having a supervisor giving additional in- The devices used for this tests were iPad 2, iPad
formation or validation was not stated. mini and iPhone 6+. The reason for choosing these
devices was the assumption that it would be easier
5.2 Reading Hike (Age 9 to 10) for children to read on a larger screen. This decision
proved to be false, not only did the iPad su↵er the
The older participants were tested with another mod- most technical related issues with GPS, but it was also
ule adapted to their reading abilities. Each one of the too big and heavy for this kind of usage and target
two classes got divided into two groups and the chil- audience.
dren had to share devices in pairs. Each station reveals The main game play element was finding the next
a new chapter of a continuous story and will give a hint station. The most used tool to achieve this objective
on where to find the next station. Additionally, the was the distance meter (see Figure 7). Another fea-
current distance to the station is displayed on screen, ture that would have been useful is the map view, but
giving feedback if the moving direction is correct. The the participants did not use it at all, which could be
application will automatically show the next chapter the case, because at the initial instructions it was not
of the story once the distance was less than 10m. shown or explained. Wake et al. [WB09] described
The narrative was fitted for the audience. It was a similar observation where the participants did not
the story of a young girl looking for her lost domestic use the map but instead relied on the distance meter
pig called Norbert. While searching him, she meets very heavily. They try to explain it with the partici-
several other animals and people who help finding her pants - in this case adults - knowing the area very well
29
Location-Based Learning Games Made Easy
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 7: The three states of the GPS component. Loading (a), input field for fallback code (b) and distance
meter (c).
and expecting to see di↵erent scenarios with younger story, were quite simple, they allowed the children to
students. The findings could contradict this thesis, immerse into the experience. The technical side of the
because the participants are within the suggested age application was stable. However, the GPS availability
range and did not know the area too well. of some devices had a negative impact on the users’
The participants permanently overrated the accu- experience. Due to its simplicity, the user interface
racy of the distance meter. They tried to find the was easy to use and did not need a lot of instruction.
right direction by walking a few steps and looking at
the new distance as feedback. While this seems like 6 Conclusion
a valid approach on solving these problems it implies
Mobilot shows that it is possible to develop a tool that
a few other problems. First of all, the GPS signal
allows an easy and in-situ creation of location-based
is not completely reliable. The game component re-
learning games. Many games fitting this category show
sponsible for calculating the distance was configured
a very similar structure that can be streamlined into
to accept an accuracy aviation up to 20m before falling
a generic system, while maintaining its attractiveness
back into an alternative mode. The current accuracy
to players.
was even displayed next to the distance. This e↵ect is
This paper described the development of a tool to
also described by Facer et al. [FJS+ 04] who observed
easily create location-based games as well as the out-
children attributing substantially more intelligence to
come of two user tests. The user tests brought good
the devices and technologies than there were in real-
results for the games and the participants enjoyed the
ity [FJS+ 04].
game. Still, there is room for improvement. A next
During the test, a severe bug was noticed the first
step will be the user interface evaluation of the station
time. The issue, that occurred when the GPS module
editor with teachers as the target audience.
of the device returned an error, led to the situation
The future possibilities of Mobilot seem endless.
that neither the current position was checked nor the
One of the next extensions will be the implementation
fallback alternative was displayed. To solve this prob-
of further context recognition like the distance to ob-
lem, the user had to refresh the page, which triggers a
ject (measured with Bluetooth signal) and social inter-
new request for the GPS position, normally resolving
action. With these new features the tool belt for creat-
the issue.
ing interesting learning experiences will allow the cre-
Another problem was the selection of the fallback ation of wide-ranging game mechanism. Another idea
codes, which were three random letters. The auto cor- is to open up the concept of the linear game structure
rect feature of the devices made it hard to input these to allow an autonomous exploration of the individual
codes and automatically replaced the text with a cor- stations or the creation of conditional paths during one
rection. Words that would pass the auto correct in- game session.
spection would have been a better choice.
As for further research, it would be interesting to
All participants were satisfied with the application. evaluate more mobile learning games in an educational
The described problems did not upset them that much. context. Teachers should be encouraged to use tech-
They stated that they would be interested in similar nology in their classes and therefore more tools are
games and could imagine using such an application in required to support them.
their spare time and with their families.
Acknowledgements
5.3 Summary
This work was supported by the project seekoi (no.
Overall, the evaluations, of a self-explanatory Mobidul 1154) funded by the Internet Foundation Austria
(Reading Hike) as well as one with additional instruc- (IPA) as well as the Austrian Ministry for Transport,
tors (Reading Rally), show a successful involvement of Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) under the Aus-
the participants in the Mobiduls. Even so the game trian Security Research Programme KIRAS via the
objectives, like solving a task or progressing in the project Courageous Community (no. 850196).
30
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