Creating the Foundation for a Virtual Game-Based Learning Lab to Stimulate Distance Education

Game-based learning has established itself as a student-centred supplementary learning activity in most higher education subjects. Many university campuses are today providing collections of board games available at no cost for self-directing student activities. For universities with a high degree of distance education there is little comparable material available for online courses. There is of course a plethora of digital games available online, but rarely with any alignment to academic subjects and specific courses. For STEM subjects there are several research studies that report on successful initiatives for virtual labs with a mix of tailored simulations and educational games. The aim of this paper is to describe and discuss the requirements for a virtual lab that could provide user-friendly access to simulations and educational games in a wide range of university subjects. In the first phase of this educational development project, the focus is on games for the subjects of History, Pedagogy, and Computer science. The long-term goal is to create a virtual learning lab for all university subjects. Beside the work on finding the appropriate learning games and applications, a large part of this project will be creating a structure for the virtual lab and providing access to different types of games. The research strategy utilizes the Design science framework, with a focus for this paper on the initial phases of 1) Explicating the problem and 2) defining the requirements for the artefact. Data were gathered partly through a literature review, partly through a study of earlier development projects at the university, and partly from discussions with other researchers in the field of game-based learning. Regarding phase 1) To explicate and elaborate on the problem, the findings indicate that the issues of user-friendly access and licenses for commercial games are of primary importance. This leads over to phase 2), which indicates requirements for high usability and user-friendliness in a virtual gaming lab. This means hosting a mix of commercial quality games and educational games developed and tested in earlier development projects at the university. There are also discussions on collaborations with other game developing teachers from outside our university.