Understanding Pervasive Games for Purposes of Learning

Among the manifold of approaches to technology enhanced learning, game based learning is very attractive. In game based learning, the technological systems employed for the purpose of learning are digital games. Stand-alone serious games are rare. Games deployed for learning need to be embedded into suitable contexts. A particular approach promising from certain didactic perspectives and driven by a variety of characteristics of learning contents and training requirements is embedding those games into the surrounding physical world. Games embedded into the physical world are called pervasive games. The ways of embedding are paramount. There have been numerous attempts to design and to implement pervasive games, in general, and to deploy pervasive games for learning purposes, in particular. The majority of those pervasive games failed quite badly. Storyboarding the interaction between the real world and the virtual world of a pervasive game reveals the essential strengths and weaknesses of the game concept and allows for diagnosing didactic flaws of game play. Beyond its diagnostic power, the approach supports the design of more affective and effective pervasive games. Storyboarding is a methodology of anticipating human experience and, thus, a methodology of didactic design. 1 THE AUTHORS’ POSITION All of us–readers and authors of this manuscript–are aware of the fact that so-called digital natives1 have other expectations when facing digital media than their parents and teachers. Playful learning, whenever possible, and using digital games for learning without any fear belongs to the widespread expectations teachers and trainers have to fulfill. In response, game based learning and serious games are terms naming some prosperous field of technology enhanced learning. When the learning contents is out there in the surrounding world, it seems plausible to bring the games out there as well–pervasive games concepts evolve. In harsh contrast to the promises, most pervasive games failed badly. There will surely be no superficial and short explanation for a large number of finally disappointing game developments. But understanding the past and 1The term digital natives as polemically opposed to denigratingly called digital immigrants is, exactly in this sense, ascribed to Marc Prensky (Prensky 2001), although the idea as a whole dates back to (Barlow, 1996) writing: “You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants.” shaping the future surely needs some pondering, some exchange of opinions, and several innovative ideas. The authors aim at some small contribution to this process by advocating their position, ◦ that there are decisive characteristics of pervasive games which may be well explicated by suitable approaches of storyboarding applied to pervasive games. Using storyboarding a posteriori, it turns out to work as a diagnostic tool. Doing it a priori, storyboarding becomes a tool for design and development fostering to draw conclusions from lessons learned in earlier projects that failed. Based on the authors’ key position above, one is lead to some more viewpoints worth to be considered. ◦ Pervasive games may be classified according to their pervasiveness which is of didactic relevance. ◦ The crucial embedding of learning contents into game play may be characterized quite well by means of storyboarding terminology. ◦ The storyboarding technology, by its very nature, allows for an explication of the context conditions in which learning is likely to take place. The basic terminology will be introduced briefly to be applied to a larger number of pervasive games.