Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

Game-based learning (GBL) environments are shown to support open-ended inquiry, collaborative learning, shared knowledge creation and decision-making processes. The study at hand focuses on examining students' descriptions of problematic situations and collaborative learning in a virtual simulation game. We were interested in what kinds of challenges the students encounter in virtual teamwork in GBL. Data of the study stems from gaming sessions in which teams of 5-7 students worked in a virtual learning environment and steered their simulation companies' supply chain in real-time. Students' reflection assignments were analyzed with qualitative content analysis. Our results show that during the sessions students encountered communication challenges, collaboration challenges, organizing challenges and skills and competence issues. As all these are typical for modern dispersed collaborative work, we can state that the game-based course of this study provided the students with opportunities to rehearse and solve these challenges in a virtual working context. Our results emphasize the importance of providing students an opportunity to exercise collaboration and problem-solving skills in authentic, safe and inspiring settings, and that simulation games represent a feasible context for this.

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert