Developing online collaborative games for e-Learning environments

Abstract

Based on our experience, we believe that games, competition and teamwork offer a pleasant and active way of learning. This is much more efficient when the learner has a smile on his face, when he is astonished and curious about next levels and finds the game sufficiently challenging and fun to try again. Our application proposal has the purpose of implementing an e-Learning platform for improving the teaching and learning process in somewhat abstract domains, such as computer architecture or object oriented programming, with the help of games. These games are time-dependent and are able to support collaboration between groups. To this date there are two learning games implemented: a crossword puzzle and a collaborative jigsaw puzzle, the last one supporting multiplayer mode for up to 16 simultaneous players, being simple, fast, fun and reliable. Our application allows geographically distributed students to concurrently and collaboratively play the same game. © 2014 Springer-Verlag.