Context-Aware Mobile Role Playing Game for Learning – A Case of Canada and Taiwan

The research presented in this paper is part of a 5-year renewable national research program in Canada, namely the NSERC/iCORE/Xerox/Markin research chair program that aims to explore possibilities of adaptive mobile learning and to provide learners with a learning environment which facilitates personalized learning at any time and any place. One of the sub-projects of this 5-year national research program is to design and develop context-aware mobile learning services. The research team of the sub-project applied narrative theory to design a location based Context-Aware Mobile Role Playing Game (CAM-RPG) in order to give students feeling of living in the game world and role playing, exploring the game world, completing the quests, and learning things. A pilot study was then conducted to see how the two game features – context-awareness and story generation – influence students' attitude towards the use of the mobile educational game. The research findings suggest that the story generated in CAM-RPG positively influences users' attitude towards game use and increases users' perceived game usefulness. With the research findings, other components and outcomes of sub-projects, such as natural language processing, location-awareness, multiple input forms, social networking, and student modeling, can then be put together as one piece to provide students effective and efficient mobile learning experiences.