Game-design Workshops with Co-creation Toolkit to Support Game-based Learning for Heritage Museum

In the context of heritage museums, the integration of game-based learning and gamification has garnered significant interest from academia and educational stakeholders. However, barriers such as high costs and lengthy development cycles hinder wider adoption of game-based learning, particularly among educators who lack of software development skills. This paper introduces a series of game design workshops supported by a card-based toolkit aimed at simplifying the process of creating location-based games. These workshops serve a dual purpose: providing educators and museum stakeholders with an accessible toolkit for data collection and offering engaging game-based learning activities for young museum visitors aged 15-30. To achieve this goal, a pilot study was conducted in collaboration with the Guangzhou Maritime Museum, focusing on 48 university students aged 18-26 and 10 museum staff members visiting the Sea God Temple, a heritage site with a 1400-year history. Qualitative and quantitative data collected from this study indicated positive feedback on the value of a co-creation toolkit acting as the instructional scaffolding to support informal learning. Insights gained from this research informed the refinement of the toolkit design, while the game ideas from workshops served as a foundation for mobile game development tailored to young museum visitors.