Teaching with game-based learning management systems: Exploring a pedagogical dungeon

The work reported here takes place in the educational domain. The authors propose a learning environment based on a graphical representation of a course. The emergence of online multiplayer games led the authors to apply the following metaphor to the digital work environments: The method of acquiring knowledge during a learning session is similar to the exploration of a dungeon, where each student collects knowledge related to a learning activity. In the first part of this article, the authors focuses on a description of how concepts of learning activities can be represented in the dungeon view. The second part deals with the support of the observation task for the teacher during a learning session and more generally with providing users with awareness. The authors thus propose a multiagent system using data collected from traces resulting from the collaborative learning activity. Finally, this environment allowed the authors to set up experiments with students at their university.