ARG - The Tower of Babel
Via: ARGuing – Alternate Reality Game for Education
ARGuing for Multilingual Motivation in Web 2.0 is a European Union education project for motivating secondary school students to learn languages.
In my prior posting ARGuing: Serious Games in Education, I provided an overview for the project that consists of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), which works as a communication context for international, multilingual, peer student communities that have to solve a puzzle by working as a multiplayer collaborative group in multiple languages.
The project team has also learnt how an ARG can be adapted to almost any area of education.
The ARG The Tower of Babel embeds a story designed to engage the target group: students are to save the planet by completing specific quests, collaboratively and internationally.
The game has enrolled 400+ teachers and students from 17 countries, with more than 9,000 quests answered and 800 files uploaded.
The project has created a number of resources that are now available online and include:
1. A re-usable game platform in multiple languages
2. A project website with additional information. Papers for download:
a. A methodology to develop and use Alternate Reality Games in education
b. A set of case studies of other ARGs and Serious Games with empirical evidence of results
c. A set of use case scenarios that show examples of how ARGs could be used for other subjects or cross-subjects
d. An online teacher training module to enable educators to use the ARG
e. Papers' summary on pedagogy, evaluation and technology employed.
The project team is also offering consulting services to other educators interested in using ARGs in education.
For further details please contact Prof. Thomas Connolly, Coordinator ARGuing EU Project, University of The West of Scotland.