Developing and Testing a Mobile Learning Games Framework

Abstract

Abstract: In 2010 1.1 million pupils took private lessons in Germany, with 25% of all German children by the age of 17 having attended paid private lessons at some point in their school career (Klemm & Klemm, 2010). The high demand for support for learning curricular content led us to consider an integrated solution that speeds up both the design of mobile learning games as well as their implementation and adaption. This paper describes the iterative development of a game development framework for touch‑based mobile learning games. The framework focuses on touch‑controlled interaction due to the fact that in 2014 more than 87% of German teenagers possess a smart phone with touch input (Feierabend, Plankenhorn, Rathgeb, 2014) as well as the possibility to engage in short bursts of learning experiences during their idle time, e.g. when commuting. The framework consists of a conceptual component that specifies five different game modes for casual mobile learning games. The technical part of the framework builds on the Unity game engine and offers an architecture that mirrors the game modes and objects from the conceptual part as well as a layer of service building blocks that cover generic functionality like logging, high score management or social media integration. The development of the framework is iterative and cyclic in that each produced game enriches the framework, which in turn accelerates the prototyping and development of further games. Additionally the games themselves are developed and tested iteratively both concerning usability/user‑experience and transfer, which is described in this paper. developed game prototype as well as the results of our usability tests.