Educational Resources as Web Game Frameworks for Primary and Middle School Students

Ciprian-Bogdan Chirila

University Politehnica of Timisoara, Romania,
Faculty of Automation and Computer Science
E-mail: chirila(at)cs.upt.ro

Abstract

The massive open online course is a development in distance education. The existing online courses for primary and middle school students are based on several classic open educational resources like images, sounds, animations, but they could also be based on competence achieving web games. Writing web games for each discipline competence is a hard task, achievable only by programmers. Using frameworks we can offer teachers and other content editors the possibility of creating their own web games for the students. In this sense we designed and implemented two frameworks. One framework is based on a configurable dialog between two players. The dialog can be configured with mathematical expressions based on formulas, fields for questions with expected answers, loops for repetition in case of wrong answers, mark giving algorithms. The second framework is based on a configurable board and dice. The board has to be designed as an image with several ordered cells. On each cell we can configure events like: showing simple messages, asking questions, reading surprises. All events can be configured with actions like: moving backward of forward on the table stepping a certain number of cells, rolling the dice again. Both frameworks are using the HTML5 web technology and a simple communication server side logic. Dialog based games are suitable to disciplines which are have mathematical formulas like arithmetic, physics, chemistry. The board games are suitable to disciplines where concepts must be learned and actions must be performed. Thus, the games implemented with these frameworks represent a more attractive way to perform distance education for primary and middle school students.

Keywords

MOOC; open educational resources; two player online games; game frameworks; dialog games; board games

BibTex

@InCollection{Chirila2015ELSEElsevier,
  author 		= 	{Ciprian-Bogdan Chirila},
  editor		=	{Bogdan Patrut and Carmen Holotescu and Gabriela Grosseck and Diana Andone},
  title 		= 	{Educational Resources as Web Game Frameworks for Primary and Middle School Students},  
  booktitle		=	{Social Media and Open Education},
  publisher 	=	{Woodhead Publishing imprint of Elsevier},
  issn			=	{},
  isbn			=	{},
  doi			=	{},
  month 		= 	{},
  day 			= 	{},
  year 			= 	{2015},
}

Text

[Chirila2015ELSEElsevier] - Ciprian-Bogdan Chirila. Educational Resources as Web Game Frameworks for Primary and Middle School Students, Bogdan Patrut, Carmen Holotescu, Gabriela Grosseck, Diana Andone, Social Media and Open Education, Woodhead Publishing, imprint of Elsevier, http://store.elsevier.com/Woodhead-Publishing, 2015, (to appear).

Data fields

[Chirila2015ELSEElsevier] -
Ciprian-Bogdan Chirila.
Educational Resources as Web Game Frameworks for Primary and Middle School Students,
Bogdan Patrut, Carmen Holotescu, Gabriela Grosseck, Diana Andone,
Social Media and Open Education,
Woodhead Publishing imprint of Elsevier,
http://store.elsevier.com/Woodhead-Publishing,
2015.