DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE EDUCATIONAL

GAMES BASED ON QUESTIONS

M. Espinilla, I. Palomares

Computer Sciences Department, University of Jaén, Jaén, Spain

H. Bustince

Automatics and Computing Department, Public University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

Keywords: Educational games based on questions, Self-evaluation, Self-training.

Abstract: Thousands and thousands of electronic contents have been developed in e-learning models and platforms to

support the student’s learning process. Generally, e-contents are complete, well designed and correct, but

sometimes they can result boring for students. One example is the self-evaluation and self-training process

that is generally conducted by the student through the resolution of test questions presented in a multiple-

choice exam. However, a simple multiple-choice test is boring for students and they will need content that is

motivating and enjoyable. In this contribution, we propose the use of educational games as a tool for

students to carry out the process self-training and self-evaluation. The set of games are included in a

SCORM learning module, so its use is extended to any e-learning platform.

1 INTRODUCTION

The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the

21st century have been witness of the deep change

produced by the huge development of the

Information and Communication Technologies

(ICT) due to the growth and development of Internet

and its services (Carballar, 1999). This growth has

caused that all the areas and topics related to our

lives such as economics, commerce, employment,

learning, leisure, etc., have been affected by these

technologies in order to improve their already

existing services (Mjoset, 2000; Piccoli et al., 2001;

Trochim et al., 2003).

One area deeply affected, modified and

improved by the web based technologies has been

the Learning, because the use of networking has

allowed overcoming both time and placing

limitations, which were an obstacle in classical

classroom-based learning. E-learning is the result of

integrating learning and Internet services. In this

contribution, e-learning is defined as all those

planned teaching/learning experiences that employ a

wide variety of technologies, mainly computer-

based or Internet-based (Ho and Ko, 2010), to

disseminate knowledge.

Educational contents online can be shown in

multiple formats, for example text, images, sounds,

video, games etc. and the idea of using platforms to

store all these contents is becoming important and

usual in many educational institutions. In fact, the

interest on virtual learning environments (VLE) has

grown in the last decade. A VLE is a structure

populated with digital and interactive resources that

favor the student’s self-learning (González-

Videgaray et al., 2009). VLEs are used in multiple

forms: in on-site, distant or blended education; with

static or dynamic contents; with or without

interactivity, organizationally or personally.

There are different learning content as learning

modules, long test, glossary of terms, file download,

etc. Each content pursues a purpose, our purpose is

focused on e-learning content that support self-

evaluation and self-training process. Generally, this

process is carried out across contents that present

multiple-choice test. The repeated use of the

different questions is a good method to acquire the

knowledge students need in order to achieve success

with their subject/course. Furthermore, students can

measure their level of aptitude thanks to the

application’s interface, informing them about correct

answer, mistakes, etc.

484

Espinilla M., Palomares I. and Bustince H. (2010).

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE EDUCATIONAL GAMES BASED ON QUESTIONS.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 484-488

DOI: 10.5220/0002861704840488

 SciTePress

However, a simple multiple-choice test may

finally result boring to students, who wish a more

entertaining way of learning (Sánchez et al., 2009).

For this reason, it seems appropriate to develop an

entertaining tool to conduct test. In this contribution,

we present a SCORM module than contains a set of

educational games developed at the University of

Jaén as an online support material that provides to

students an effective self-training and self-evaluation

tool in an entertaining way (Marínez et al., 2007a;

Marínez et al., 2007b), because the questions are

presented to students through educational games.

To do so, the contribution is structured as

follows: Section 2 reviews some concepts of e-

learning needed to understand our proposal. Section

3 shows our e-learning proposal consisting of

educational games based on questions in a Scorm.

Finally, Section 4 presents some conclusions and

future work related to our proposal.

2 E-LEARNING BACKGROUND

The use of e-learning has been used since several

years ago to support the learning. Different contents

exist in the e-learning platforms, each content has a

few characteristics and each one chases an aims

inside the learning process of the student. In this

section, we briefly review the learning process

(Sabry and Baldwin, 2003; Atman et al., 2009), the

platforms that support it and the kinds of content that

contains the e-learning platforms

2.1 e-Learning

The incorporation of ICT in the Internet has meant

the new educational methodology of the 21

century: the e-Learning. Next, we give some

definitions for e-Learning (Rosenberg, 2001): e-

Learning is the convergence of the internet and

education (Howard Block (Block, 1999)); All

possible ways of learning by means of the Internet.

(Cisco Systems); e-Learning consists of the use of

“The Web” to design, communicate, select, expand

and manage knowledge (Elliot Masie, The Masie

Center).

According to these definitions, we can assume e-

Learning is attached to the use of the Internet as a

knowledge diffusion resource (Browning and

Williams, 1997). Now, students are not strictly

required to be present in a certain place and a certain

hour, and teachers aren´t expressly devoted to give

master classes, thus removing some geographical,

economical, age or expert availability gaps. Thanks

to e-Learning systems, teaching essentials can be

attended more in a more flexible and economical

way (The American Journal of Distance Education,

1989). The main e-Learning issues in comparison to

traditional learning models are the following

(Rosenberg and Marc, 2001):

 Dynamic. Contents shown in the e-Learning

system are regularly updated to attend those

educational essentials consider important

anytime, in order to respond to constant

technological evolution. Traditional systems

require plenty of time and resources to update

any necessary documentation.

 Real time operating: We can find what we need

instantly. This is not possible in traditional

systems, where a time interval in needed to

gather such information.

 Individual: An e-learning satisfies individual

student's particular knowledge essentials

(Dewey, 1916-1966). However, a traditional

system is based on master classes, given to a

group of students simultaneously.

 Different ways to obtain knowledge: Thanks to

the use of ICT, e-Learning systems

incorporate different technologies to show

knowledge in the most appropriate way

according to the student's requirements.

Traditional systems also allow methods to

show knowledge through ICT, but a major

investment is needed.

As we can see, e-Learning advantages against

traditional teaching methods are causing that both

public and private organizations (Ho et al., 2010) are

taking measures to attend all educational essentials

required in the 21

century’s society.

2.2 E-Learning Contents

The Internet’s high multimedia capacities allow

teachers to use different kinds of learning material

(Ritchie and Hoffman, 1997). The most usual e-

learning contents available for students are usually

the following:

 Documents and other files: The simplest way to

provide students an e-learning material is

making available a set of documents, images,

etc. with the content of interest for the subject

or course they are studying.

 Forums: A forum is a medium for open

discussion or voicing of ideas related to a

particular subject. Learners can use a forum to

exchange questions and ideas about a course

or subject with other learners or teachers,

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE EDUCATIONAL GAMES BASED ON QUESTIONS

485

posting messages available to be read by other

users in the same group.

 Chat: A chat is another way to exchange ideas

between two or more users, similar to forums.

The difference is: messages are transferred in

a real-time communications with chat, as an

instant messenger application, and they can´t

be read by other users who haven´t taken part

in the communication.

 Learning Modules: A learning module consists

of a file, with a particular format, containing

learning material. This material can be varied,

from documents and images to tests and

applications. The main advantage of learning

modules is their capacity to be managed in

multiple platforms and environments, because

they often obey to a standardized format.

 Tests: A very typical e-learning resource.

Learners can perform an online test anywhere

with a computer connected to the Internet.

Most of these types of material are commonly

used in devoted learning environments known as

learning platforms.

2.3 e-Learning Platforms

Most e-learning processes are made through e-

learning platforms or environment. A learning

platform or environment (Casamayor et al., 2009)

provides a set of educational tools for students to

learn through a computer connected to the Internet.

Generally, in these platforms, lectures upload

different type of contents so that they are available

online to all interested learners. Representative

examples of learning platforms are Moodle and

ILIAS. Most of these platforms are ready to store

educational content in several formats: text, images,

media, tests, specific learning module formats, etc.

Another important issue offered by e-Learning

Platforms is an integrated environment for the

creating ad enforcing tests and assessments, in order

to monitor student’s learning progress as well as the

tutors and examiners, supporting different kinds of

questions, i.e. multiple choice, single choice, cloze

questions, ordering, matching, etc. But the most

flexible issue is the possibility of uploading learning

content in SCORM module format. Learning

modules are a flexible resource, usually compatible

with most of the current Operating Systems and

Web Browsers. A SCORM module may contain a

great variety of content and interactive applications

in several programming languages, for example

Java.

3 EDUCATIONAL GAMES

BASED ON QUESTIONS

Our proposal in this contribution consists of the

design and development of online educational games

based on questions, aimed to students of different

modules. These games provide students a useful,

easy and entertaining resource to self-train and self-

evaluate their learning skills. The student’s self-

training is possible because the repeated use of the

different games is a good method to acquire the

knowledge students need in order to achieve success

with their subject/course, and we have a student’s

self-evaluation because they can measure their level

of aptitude thanks to the game’s interface, informing

them about correct answer, mistakes, etc. In the

following, we present the design and development of

educational games, then we present the description

of each game and finally, we propose the SCORM

structure that includes all games.

3.1 Design and Development of

Educational Games

The educational games have designed in the Java

object-oriented language, as Java Applets. An

Applet is a Java application designed to run on the

Web, under a Client/Server Architecture, so that the

server system sends it to client systems to be run on

each of them.

Figure 1: Example of Main Page for our Gaming Web

Application.

We have integrated these Applets both in HTML

pages with CSS styles and SCORM learning

modules, as described in Section 2.3. The latter

format has the great advantage of storing multiple

games at once; in fact, a single SCORM module

may host a tree-structured set of different games for

a module. Figure 1 shows an example of main page

for our Web application, designed for the course

‘Computer Science applied to Business

Management’.

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

486

An important novelty in the design and

development of the application is the availability of

a set of questions it reads to upload the game’s

questions shown to students, so that it is easy to

change this file without affecting the application,

thus giving lectures the possibility to create game

copies based on different sets of questions (see

Fig.2). The results have been delivered to

corresponding lectures in multiple formats.

Figure 2: SCORM structure for educational games.

3.2 Description of the Educational

Games

Our proposal contains five different educational

games. The selected games are traditional games

that generally everyone knows. Next, we describe

each of these games, placing special emphasis on the

learning and assessing processes:

 Hang-Man: The user must guess, with the help

of a clue, a missing word, by inserting letters

included on it. If wrong letters are introduced

more than once, user may lose the game. The

objective is assessing short questions and

uncompleted sentences.

 Cross-Words: Given a set of definitions, the

user must find the corresponding words to

these definitions in a crossword. Thus, the aim

of the game consists of assimilating a series of

concepts and key ideas related to the subject.

 Word Find Puzzle: The aim is to find all

definitions and concepts hidden in the puzzle

before time expires. From the learning point

of view, the objective is identical as

mentioned in the Cross-Words game.

 Checkerboard: With the help of a few clues

(short questions); user must unlock a hidden

passage on the board. The game allows

students to interrelate different concepts and

ideas, in order to reach the final answer to a

key question.

 Tic-Tac-Toe: A variant of the popular game,

where users face the own game in a duel over

a 7x7 board. Random multiple-choice

questions are shown. If the user chooses the

right option, he can place a counter on the

board; otherwise, the game places a counter.

The aim is getting as many lines as possible.

 Tic-Tac-Toe (Small version): A simpler variant

of the latter, where the first who lines up three

counters is the winner.

 Both Tic-Tac-Toe’s versions lead students to

the assessment of their amount of global

knowledge acquired through the execution of

a test type evaluation.

As we have just seen, different types of questions

are used in the educational games, included short

questions, definitions, completing the sentences,

revealing passages and multiple-choice questions.

3.3 Structure of SCORM Modules

The SCORM modules we have set out in our

proposal consist of a set of individual educational

games (applets) for different contents in a course.

We have considered a single SCORM module for

each complete course, integrating both applets and

HMTL pages to contain each applet in a file

compressed under a zip format. The resulting

SCORM file is compatible with many learning

platforms, for example ILIAS.

Figure 3: Tic-Tac-Toe integrated in a SCORM Module.

Figure 3 shows on the right side a Tic-Tac-Toe

game for the course ‘English Literature’, and a

complete tree structure for the corresponding

SCORM module, running on an ILIAS learning

platform, on the left side. The game tree includes all

games creates for ‘English Literature’ course,

classified according to the type of game. For each

game, besides, we divide educational games by

themes or didactic units.

SCORM modules have been developed for

various subjects who belong to different degrees at

the University of Jaén.

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE EDUCATIONAL GAMES BASED ON QUESTIONS

487

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORKS

The virtual learning environments have been created

and developed in many education institutions to

improve different aspects of the learning processes.

However, some contents are boring. In this

contribution, we proposed the design and

development of educational games as content for e-

learning. The set of educational games will be used

as a tool for students to carry out the process of self-

evaluation and self-training and it is more pleasant

that others content that have the same objectives.

Furthermore, the set of educational games is

included in a SCORM, so its use may extend to any

e-learning platform. In the current year, we have

successfully performed the implantation of these

games in four subjects belonging to different degrees

in the University of Jaén.

Our future work is aimed at developing the

proposed set of educational games for mobile

devices that allows students to carry out the

processes of self-evaluation and self-training about

their skills on a topic/subject, using their mobile

device at any time and any place.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper has been partially supported by the

research projects PID33B, TIN2009-08286, and

P08-TIC-3548.

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