Open and Cultural Data Games for Learning

Abstract: Educators often seek ways to introduce gaming in the classroom in order to break the usual teaching routine, expand the usual course curriculum with additional knowledge, but mostly as a means to motivate students and increase their engagement with the course content. Even though the vast majority of students find gaming to be appealing and a welcome change to the usual teaching practice, many educators and parents doubt their educational value; in this paper, we discuss a card game designed to teach environmental matters to early elementary school students, using open data. We present a comparative study of how the game increased the students' interest for the subject, as well as their performance and engagement to the course, compared with conventional teaching and a Prezi presentation used to teach the same content to other student groups.