The Design of MobiGP by Using Tamagotchi

Abstract

This paper presents a design of an educational mobile game for learning object-orientated programming concepts. The project is called MobiGP. The design is based on methods which are the story line method and Tamagotchi game. This based on the fact that mobile devices are getting more diffused, the pervasiveness of mobile learning (m-learning) and also the massive success of Tamagotchi worldwide. Instead of just playing a game, we try to expand the purpose of playing Tamagotchi. It supports a new paradigm of playing games from entertainment to an educational activity as an attempt to provide a new mean for the students to improve their knowledge of object oriented programming (OOP) concepts instead of formal lectures and books. This paper explains more on the design part and methodologies chosen in developing MobiGP. Storyboard of the scenario for this game is also included in order to give a better view of how MobiGP will work. Our hypothesis is that, as students play this game, they will be able to understand the OOP concepts more and able to implement the knowledge in writing their own structured-programming codes during their course using any OOP languages. It is hoped that this game may be a useful method to improve the basic understanding of OOP concepts among the first year students of institute of higher learning (IHL).