Learning through collaborative design of location-based games

This paper describes the design, deployment, analysis, and evaluation of a learning scenario focused on exploring the educational potential of location-based games. Through its design and rationale, the scenario serves as an illustration of how students can learn through the collaborative design and playing of location-based games. It involves an exploration of the pedagogical potential of students as game designers, through a study of students designing location-based games for peers in order to learn history. This shows the potential of using both authoring tools to have students engage creatively with subject matter and as a focal point of collaborative learning activity. As the topic of the scenario revolved around learning about history, we also found that the ways they relate to this topic when using location-based games offers a new way of integrating curricula in learning activities, and that it is key to think beyond a single subject and look at cross-curricular elements and goals in such scenarios. We offer a very detailed description and analysis of the practical accomplishment of the learning activities involved in the collaborative design of location-based games.