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Refreshing contextualised IT curriculum with a pervasive game project in Tanzania

Published: 17 November 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Tumaini University in Tanzania started a new B. Sc. programme in Information Technology (BIT) with a contextualised curriculum in 2007. Three years later we ran an exploratory research project to design, implement and evaluate a course in which an Android-based pervasive learning game was developed for a Tanzanian museum. Course participants were students from Tumaini University and from a Finnish university. A case study of the pervasive game development process and related evaluation show how a real-world pervasive game development project fits to a contextualised curriculum, and what are the effects of an international multidisciplinary team to the learning experiences. The results indicate that the students developed skills related to technology, design, collaboration, communication, data collection and analysis, language and project work. The course also kindled the students' interest towards mobile games, Android, programming, traveling and other cultures. The results include also a set of learned lessons which may be useful for educators planning to implement similar courses as part of a contextualised curriculum.

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Cited By

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  • (2019)Serious Games Classification for Digital HeritageInternational Journal of Computational Methods in Heritage Science10.4018/IJCMHS.20190701043:2(58-72)Online publication date: Jul-2019
  • (2016)The Use of Serious Games in Museum Visits and Exhibitions: A Systematic Mapping Study2016 8th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-GAMES)10.1109/VS-GAMES.2016.7590371(1-8)Online publication date: Sep-2016
  • (2013)HiNTHunt – A Pervasive Game to Support and Encourage Desired Activities for New StudentsSerious Games Development and Applications10.1007/978-3-642-40790-1_19(200-205)Online publication date: 2013

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cover image ACM Other conferences
Koli Calling '11: Proceedings of the 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research
November 2011
149 pages
ISBN:9781450310529
DOI:10.1145/2094131
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 17 November 2011

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  1. case study
  2. contextualised curriculum
  3. pervasive game
  4. software development

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Cited By

View all
  • (2019)Serious Games Classification for Digital HeritageInternational Journal of Computational Methods in Heritage Science10.4018/IJCMHS.20190701043:2(58-72)Online publication date: Jul-2019
  • (2016)The Use of Serious Games in Museum Visits and Exhibitions: A Systematic Mapping Study2016 8th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-GAMES)10.1109/VS-GAMES.2016.7590371(1-8)Online publication date: Sep-2016
  • (2013)HiNTHunt – A Pervasive Game to Support and Encourage Desired Activities for New StudentsSerious Games Development and Applications10.1007/978-3-642-40790-1_19(200-205)Online publication date: 2013

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