Learning analytics for location-based serious games

• Main Authors: Perez-Colado, Victor M., Rotaru, Dan Cristian, Freire, Manuel, Martinez-Ortiz, Ivan, Fernandez-Manjon, Baltasar
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Avatars; Education; Games; geolocation; learning analytics; location-based games; Real-time systems; serious games; Smart phones; xAPI
• ISSN: 2165-9567
• DOI: 10.1109/EDUCON.2018.8363365

Pervasive gaming has experimented a huge commercial growth with location-based game successes such as Pokémon GO or Ingress. The serious game industry has an opportunity to take advantage of location-based mechanics to better connect games with the real world, creating more authentic immersive learning environments. Games such as historical tours, story-based exploration, laboratories, or flora explorations can greatly benefit from location-based mechanics. Location-based games usually include an augmented map to provide game context, which combines both traditional game-dependent elements such as avatars, and location-based elements such as areas or points of interest. For players, interacting with location-based elements may involve entering or exiting specific areas; or reaching a certain location and looking in a specific direction. To include standards-based learning analytics for location-based serious games (SGs), we have added support for player movement and location-based interactions to the pre-existing xAPI serious game profile. We have validated this approach through a case-study example that guided players through different sports-related facilities within a large outdoor area. This work have been carried out and it is available as part of the analytics infrastructure used in EU H2020 RAGE and BEACONING serious game projects.