4.3 Monitoring Model
Based on discussions with the teachers, we also iden-
tified the need for a tracking and monitoring sys-
tem. Its purpose is to identify whether the levels and
scenarios designed meet teachers’ needs after one or
more play sessions by the learners.
We decided to use a version of xAPI adapted to se-
rious games (Serrano-Laguna et al., 2017) as a basis
for our tracking system. xAPI allows defining indi-
cators (statements specified with triplets actor verb
object) which are stored in a Learning Record Store
(LRS).
We identified two different levels of monitor-
ing: monitoring within the level, and monitoring be-
tween the levels. With the teachers help, we de-
signed statements they felt relevant: the time taken
to complete the levels (Actor initialized level,
Actor exited level); the completion of the lev-
els (Actor completed level, Actor unlocked
level); the use of external support (Actor
unfocused game Windows, Actor focused game
Windows); the number of blocks used and the num-
ber of tests of their program ran by the learner (Actor
interacted blocks, Actor executed program).
We are currently implementing this xAPI monitor-
ing system in BM’s source code.
To conclude, thanks to the work carried out with
the teachers who accompanied us, we were able to
model three significant aspects of BM: the levels, the
scenario and the monitoring.
5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
WORK
To foster adoption and appropriation of learning
games we planned to rely on the meta-design ap-
proach (Fischer and Herrmann, 2011), and we fo-
cused on learning games for computational thinking
such as Blockly Maze (BM). Meta-design goal is to
enable teachers to act as designers of learning games
both at the initial design stage and in the use stage.
In this paper, we have presented a description of
our work in progress. The work is focused on the
deconstruction of BM, both from a conceptual and a
software standpoint. Our objective is to obtain, with
the help of participating teachers, explicit models of
the levels and the educational contents. This work
was required to provide an underdesigned (Fischer
et al., 2004) version of BM. This means a usable,
“turnkey” BM, but above all a learning game that of-
fers the main features required to provide an effec-
tive and facilitated instrumental genesis for teachers
(Rabardel, 2003).
In collaboration with the teachers involved as con-
tributors, we experimented a research method based
on the design of a concept map related to a teach-
ing field (computational thinking). The map’s design
brought to light many issues related to their teaching
as well as the needs around BM.
Based on these needs, and always in collaboration
with the teachers, we developed three models describ-
ing BM. Then, we implemented them in a new ver-
sion of BM, which we will submit to its authors (pull
request). The Level Model, implemented in JSON,
proved to be able to describe all the current BM lev-
els, as well as to be used to design new ones with
teachers. For the Scenario Model, we choose MoP-
PLiq and APPLiq and plan to evolve them to answer
our research questions (Marne and Labat, 2014). We
have started work on a Monitoring Model based on
xAPI.
The research reported in this paper was severely
limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented
us from working with as many teachers as we would
have liked. Therefore, our current and future work
consists of collaborating with more teachers in (1) de-
veloping levels to enrich and test our model of BM
levels; (2) improving and experimenting with the sce-
nario design and adaptation; and (3) implementing the
monitoring of learners to allow teachers to validate
their BM adaptations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge The Univer-
sity Lumi
`
ere Lyon 2 for the APPI 2020 Grant.
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