Opportunities and challenges of mobile location-based games in education: Exploring the integration of authoring and analytics tools

Mobile technology is becoming an integral part of student's life. The new mobile landscape shifts the educational ground demanding for innovative ways to create games for educational purposes. Location-based games provide new opportunities for effective learning in authentic environments. On the other hand, this game genre poses new challenges to educational practitioners that are closely related to technological advances and established pedagogical practices. The aim of this study is to investigate on the limitations and challenges of authoring tools regarding the support of new trends and standards. In the first place, we explore educational scenarios implemented in the form of location-based games and a general conceptual model that comprises common game elements is formulated. Secondly, two typical authoring tools that actively support location-based experiences and games are presented with a critical view with regard to the model presented. Finally, we draw conclusions in order to inform the design of next generation authoring tools. The platforms have been used successfully in educational settings by non-technical educational practitioners, however they miss the opportunity arising from integrating current trends and emerging standards focused on increasing learning technologies interoperability. Such trends afford game-learning analytics as the next generation move and new ways of integrating authoring and analytics tools need to be explored in order to make educational games even more impactful.