Can rote memorization be fun? A game shell for concept matching with Java and XML

Abstract

The concepts of some of the most popular games can be extended to become suitable as a presentation shell that can accommodate a wide variety of educational contents. As an example the popular "Concentration" board game was implemented as a Java applet that permits the teacher to define the underlying tasks independently in XML form based on an expressive grammar. The tasks can be accumulated within a database and lessons can be defined through filtering the database based on keywords, difficulty levels and other task attributes. Preliminary experience indicates that such a game can not only replace regular exams, but also be employed as a learning tool without sacrificing its appeal as a game. To help clarify the students' user models the game will be augmented by an "observer" module that records all the student interactions and an "analyzer" module that displays graphs summarizing the interactions.