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Designing e-learning games for rural children in India: a format for balancing learning with fun

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John CannyAuthors Info & Claims

DIS '08: Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems

Pages 58 - 67

https://doi.org/10.1145/1394445.1394452

Published: 25 February 2008 Publication History

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Abstract

Poor literacy remains a barrier to economic empowerment in the developing world. Of particular importance is fluency in a widely spoken "world language" such as English, which is typically a second language for these low-income learners. We make the case that mobile games on cellphones is an appropriate solution in the typical ecologies of developing regions. The challenge is to design e-learning games that are both educational and pleasurable for our target learners, who have limited familiarity with high technology. We propose the receptive-practice-activation cycle that could be used as the conceptual model for the designs. We then report how this format could be refined, based on our experiences in the field with three games that have collectively undergone nine rounds of iterations. In particular, it appears that maintaining a distinction between learning and fun to some extent is necessary for effective designs.

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Cited By

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Gamage DWani AJain PPadhi DBorah PMenon AMishra WAhmad MAhmed NSarcar SShahid SBalkrishan D(2023)Advancing HCI Research and Education within and across South AsiaExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3573815(1-6)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3573815
Chakraborty S(2022)DEVELOPMENT OF E-LEARNING IN DEVELOPING WORLD COUNTRIES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE IN INDIA AND ITS FUTURE PERSPECTIVEInternational Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH10.29121/granthaalayah.v10.i11.2022.488110:11Online publication date: 2-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v10.i11.2022.4881
Gupta MMehta DPunj AThies I(2022)Sophistication with Limitation: Understanding Smartphone Usage by Emergent Users in IndiaProceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3530190.3534824(386-400)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3530190.3534824
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Index Terms

Designing e-learning games for rural children in India: a format for balancing learning with fun
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
    1. Computer-assisted instruction
2. Human-centered computing

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Reviews

Reviewer: R. Waldo Roth

This is a wonderful paper, with well-documented research and significant potential societal implications in those locations where it is applicable. One of the authors' theses is: "We believe [English as a second language (ESL)] learning games on cellphones can potentially address the challenges, especially when the cellphone is the fastest growing technology platform in the developing world that is reaching even the poor population." Kam et al. propose a receptive-practice-activation cycle as a key technique in developing such skills, and they demonstrate its utility in their study. After explaining the methodology, they use the work from five field studies to document the worthiness of their hypothesis and the format utilized. This research report describes an interactive parrot game, which was one of three response games the authors developed to teach the English alphabet on cellular phones. The original design of the parrot game went through two additional redesigns, and the research results are documented in this report. This study and research report document extremely well the quality of the authors' research and the merit of their findings, despite at least one minor grammatical error. Not only is there a fine bibliography, but Kam et al. point out which references were most helpful in developing their research and results, and gave the most meaningful insights into their work as it developed. One of the authors' most interesting conclusions is: "In particular, it appears that maintaining a distinction between learning and fun to some extent is necessary for effective designs." I recommend this paper to anyone with an interest in this or related topics. Although I have no real expertise in this particular subspecialty, I believe this research work might also have utility in countries with a more moderate background in technology, but with poorer populations, perhaps even including areas of the US. Online Computing Reviews Service

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DIS '08: Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems

February 2008

487 pages

ISBN:9781605580029

DOI:10.1145/1394445

General Chairs:
Johann van der Schijff
University of Cape Town
,
Gary Marsden
University of Cape Town

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 25 February 2008

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February 25 - 27, 2008

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Gamage DWani AJain PPadhi DBorah PMenon AMishra WAhmad MAhmed NSarcar SShahid SBalkrishan D(2023)Advancing HCI Research and Education within and across South AsiaExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3573815(1-6)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3573815
Chakraborty S(2022)DEVELOPMENT OF E-LEARNING IN DEVELOPING WORLD COUNTRIES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE IN INDIA AND ITS FUTURE PERSPECTIVEInternational Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH10.29121/granthaalayah.v10.i11.2022.488110:11Online publication date: 2-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v10.i11.2022.4881
Gupta MMehta DPunj AThies I(2022)Sophistication with Limitation: Understanding Smartphone Usage by Emergent Users in IndiaProceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3530190.3534824(386-400)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2022
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Dixit SBhatia VKhanganba SAgrawal ADixit SBhatia VKhanganba SAgrawal A(2022)Technology Drivers for 6G6G: Sustainable Development for Rural and Remote Communities10.1007/978-981-19-0339-7_3(25-57)Online publication date: 28-Apr-2022
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Dadure PPakray PBandyopadhyay S(2021)Game-Based LearningMachine Learning Approaches for Improvising Modern Learning Systems10.4018/978-1-7998-5009-0.ch003(50-71)Online publication date: 2021
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Burova ALeisiö LSharma SThankachan BTurunen M(2021)Technology Inclusion via Endangered Language Learning Application: An Explorative Case Study with Remote Nganasan CommunityProceedings of the 24th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3464327.3464363(21-32)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2021
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India GY VO ADiwakar NJain MVashistha ASwaminathan MKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)Teachers’ Perceptions around Digital Games for Children in Low-resource Schools for the BlindProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445194(1-17)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
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Designing digital games for rural children: a study of traditional village games in India

An exploratory study of unsupervised mobile learning in rural India

SMS enhanced vocabulary learning for mobile audiences

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Designing digital games for rural children: a study of traditional village games in India

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SMS enhanced vocabulary learning for mobile audiences

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