Game Based Lifelong Learning - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 341

for example the building of a tunnel. The team
that produces the best project plan to offer to an
imaginary stakeholder wins. Each team gets a
certain amount of “chips” which need to be used
to allocate limited resources for emphasizing
certain topics over others.
The game developed by Sigurðarson (2008) is
a web-based personal glossary and quizzer module
for a popular virtual learning environment. The
glossary offers support to create on- the-fly a quiz
from either a single user's glossary or all users'
existing glossaries, to test their skills at translating
words from one language to another. A choice is
made on how many words to include in the quiz,
and after completing one, the users are able to
see how fast they completed it, the percentage
of right and wrong answers, as well as which
words they translated correctly and which not.
Other indicators can for example make use of a
“high score list” pattern, visualized as a current
placement indicator, akin to those found in racing
games, displaying “3rd” or “1st”, depending on a
player's current position. Their words per minute
might even be displayed with a mock speedometer.
Another series of games with a big potential
for use in education are location-based games
making use of latest mobile technology. According
to Grohé (2009), already a small but fair choice
of games exist that make use of location-based
services, using the Global Positioning System.
The games mentioned are “Fast Foot Challenge”,
“Geocaching”, “GPS:Tron”, “REXplorer”,
“Gowalla”, “Mobile Dead”, “The Go Game”
and “Metal Gear Solid: Portable Orbs”, all of
which make use of the possibility to monitor the
player's geographical location in relation to other
game elements (other players, objects). The pos-
sibility to use these games for learning emerges
from their social and geographical dimensions:
being able to experience real life situations cre-
ates a strong immersion factor, while the virtual
mobile indicators augment those situations with
important information needed for the game expe-
rience. For example Geocaching, the oldest and

most widely used location based game of the lot,
uses a quiz pattern for people to figure out the
coordinates of a cache (a physical treasure hidden
somewhere). Here, we already have to deal with
a sub-game which can be used for learning. After
that, the exploration and cooperation pattern is
being extensively used to put together a team of
explorers who head out to find the cache, which
might even be hidden in locations that are very
difficult to access: For example, there are caches
on Antarctica, Mount Everest or under water.
Another interesting rather scenario-based ap-
proach is the EMERGO methodology (Nadolski
et al., 2008), which is essentially an authoring
toolkit for serious games that makes use of adaptive
storytelling and role play. Here is where adaptiv-
ity becomes of interest and the learning game
approach finds relation to adaptive hypermedia
(Brusilovsky & Maybury, 2002). The story being
told can change according to the actions of the
player, and depending on the skills of the learner,
in terms of problem solving; the game may be
lost or won, or won with according delay. The
system was specifically developed to facilitate the
authoring of learning games, so the actual design
of a learning game depends on the game author.
Even though the approach technically so far only
accounts for single user games a competitive or
collaborative pattern could be introduced as so-
called “extra-game pattern” for example by two
players taking turns trying to reach the goal of a
quest more quickly than the other. The approach
is designed for higher education training but can
also work for a lifelong learning purpose.

3. ADVANTAGES OF GAMES
FOR LIFELONG LEARNING

Although the above examples show a big potential,
it might not be immediately clear what makes
learning games specifically attractive for use in
a lifelong learning context. The reasons are of
practical nature: people who are already working