Delving into the impact of location-based games on high school students: Foro Italico vs. The Siege

Abstract

This study presents the research results of the implementation of two location-based educational games in the field of history and cultural heritage, created on Taleblazer to be played by high-school students on smartphones. The games were designed to take place in the city of Rhodes island and were titled: “The Siege of Rhodes by Muhammad the Conqueror (1480 p.C.)”, briefly hereafter, The Siege and “Let’s Discover the Secrets of Foro Italico”, briefly hereafter, Foro. By applying to each of them a different design strategy (gamification versus narrative-driven plot), the prime aim was to understand which features were preferred by different age groups, but also which other, external parameters influenced the reception of the games. The overarching pedagogical basis under which this research was placed brought together a series of theoretical approaches that cross-fertilised each other: The game-based learning, Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, Situated learning in combination with approaches that highlight the importance of augmented reality and location–based (digital) games to improve the learning outcome. The research sample was 58 students, aged 12-18, who participated in both games, and the methodological tool was a questionnaire, distributed to the participants after the completion of both games. The processing and analysis of the data was done in the program SPSS. The games were created in the context of previous research, with the aim of verifying or differentiating from already recorded results. This research largely confirmed previous research results but also enriched the existing conclusions with new ones, regarding the importance of the age group and previous experience of the participants, as most of the experiments so far did not provide sufficient statistics of quantitative data. Although the learning performance was not we verified, the additional findings could prove useful in the future for a more tailored design of similar educational games, in order to optimise the learning process, taking into account factors that influence game reception. However, the need for a larger sample size and for further investigation of how games function as learning resources is undeniable.