Tao, Y.-H., Hong, W.-J., and Yeh, R. C., Designing a Monopoly-mechanism online game platform for business education,, The 2010 International Conference on e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society, e-Education, and e-Technology, Macau, January 25-27, 2010.
Designing a Monopoly-Mechanism Online Game Platform for Business Education Yu-Hui Taoa*, Wei-Jyun Honga, C. Rosa Yehb a Department of Information Management, National University of Kaohsiung, 700, Kaohsiung University Road, Kaohsiung 811, Taiwan b Graduate Institute of International Human Resources Development, National Taiwan Normal University, 162, Sec. 1, Ho-Ping E. Rd., Taipei, Taiwan *Corresponding Author:
[email protected] ABSTRACT The goal of this research is to take advantage of the popular and playful Monopoly game for designing an online game learning platform to be used in higher educational environment. The research focuses on improving the traditional monopoly mechanism to be closer to real-world situations while retaining its original game playing. Moreover, class-assignment learning management functions are integrated into this online learning game platform to make it easily used and thus adopted by college teachers and students in formal classroom learning of higher education institutes. With this innovative design and several key improvements, the players must take advantage of strategies and deal with their opponents accordingly so as to have a greater chance of winning the match in this online monopoly-mechanism learning platform. In addition to be a learning platform, it can be also used as a research platform for conducting and experimenting studies such as users’mental models, behaviors and psychological factors on business simulation game learning in higher education. Keyword: Business simulation game, Monopoly, learning platform 1. Introduction Due to the rapid progress of Information Technology, the students encounter computers at a very early age which has led the computer games to be one of their main leisure. On one hand, addiction in computer games has a slight impact on the student’ s schoolwork (Eow et al. 2009). On the other hand, some researches have repeatedly showed that games can help and attract students, in particular the digital
learning game may achieve better teaching outcome (Ebner & Holzinger, 2007; Robertson & Howells, 2008; Coller & Scott, 2009). In particular, Robertson & Howells (2008) discovered that the students become more active towards learning while designing computer games, such that the game itself encourages the students by becoming the determination of success. Accordingly, if the differences between addiction and immersing themselves into the games can be understood (Charlton & Danforth, 2007), the negative outcome of the student’ s addiction may be corrected. Furthermore, this learning by gaming may be introduced in the formal learning to enhance the effectiveness of learning, which maybe a kind of paradigm shift the educational institutes and families have long searched for. Although the fact that the learning games could be used in education can no longer be ignored (Lim, 2008), this digital learning game is mostly adopted by the primary and secondary schools, but relatively low by higher education. For example, Top-Boss who is a Taiwan’ s main supplier of business simulation games promotes their products like Business Operations Simulation System (BOSS), Marketing Winners, Distribution Master and Beer Games etc, have shown a remarkable growth in its adoption by schools and teachers in recent years. Although these games are relatively helpful in teaching, the present use of these business simulation games by the undergraduate teachers and students are not as high as expected. A study of Taiwan’ s college students who had used the computer simulation game pointed out that, playfulness and interface attractiveness were the two main elements that had an impact on the student’ s continuance use of business simulation games (Tao et al., 2009). Therefore, Lim (2008) emphasized that even though the teachers brought in digital games into classrooms, but they were still unable to escape the traditional patterns of teaching since the design of these teaching games were completely unable to attract the students like the commercial digital games. Yeh et al. (2007) hoped to get out of the traditional teaching game pattern by proposing a popular monopoly mechanism as the core of online game learning platform that allows the substantial playfulness of the business simulation game to be easily designed and implemented in classes, and can be continuously used by the teachers and the students. Almost everyone knows how to play the monopoly game since their childhood, which gives the players an equal starting point to win the match without any unfair situation due to its complex operating techniques (Cheng et al., 2009). Following the conceptualization of Yeh et al. (2007), this research elaborates and extends their research by designing such a monopoly-mechanism online game platform, and in the hope that this innovative and insightful design can be
implemented and thus used by the higher educational institutes in Taiwan and other regions. The so-called game learning platform is the design concept of integrating the game platform with teaching management. In this paper, through describing a number of design objectives with illustrative diagrams, the outcomes of the focal design concept can be clearly presented. Besides, to realize what Lim (2008) has proposed the concept of learning by doing where the students can achieve a better learning goal and outcome through their self designed games, the design of this learning platform is upgraded to a game engine that allows the teachers to design classes on different themes. Accordingly, the learning by designing or learning by doing can be easily supported b allowing the students to design monopoly-mechanism online game on this game-engine learning platform. The remaining sections of this paper are as follows: in the second section, we shall briefly introduce the related documents; in the third section, we shall introduce the design hypothesis and prior knowledge of this research which includes the definition of monopoly mechanism and the introduction of the main interface of this game; and the main designing details of this game platform are introduced in the fourth section. Finally, the conclusion and the future works of this research will be seen in section five. 2. Critical Review The popularity of the e-learning development has led to the increase in the game-oriented learning. Many scholars have applied games to different classes, such as conducting computer safety training and prevention (Cone et al., 2007), using virtual games to teach the students about the knowledge of geography (Virvou & Katsionis, 2008), making use of games to impart knowledge on mechanical engineering (Coller and Scott, 2009), and making use of monopoly as the theme for dynamic strategic competition and teaching games (Yeh et al., 2007). According to Prensky’ s (2008a) point of view, the games used for teaching can be classified into two kinds; one is the mini games which only impart part knowledge during class and the other is a complex game that uses a single game to complete the entire class. In reality, these e-learning technologies, including online learning games, play a supporting role that leads the students to have greater interests in their classes. In other words, students can make use of these games to carry out self learning and the teachers only need to provide support when required (Presky, 2008b). Moreover,
the so called learning by doing concept proposed by Lim (2008) just requires the teachers to remind the students about some basic operations through the use of a well designed game. Due to the enthusiasm and curiosity for the game, the students are able to quickly adapt to the game and this is possible only through a high quality learning game. Many scholars points out that they have never use a high quality teaching game themselves (Fu et al., 2009). A good game can not only attract students but it should also elaborate its teaching functions. How can a game attract students? Allowing the students to have a simulated feeling as though they are on spot can be of help (Lim, 2008), like a role playing game where the players in the game put themselves in a role; some people have a sense of justice and enthusiasm and try to help the other players in the game; some people are good at scheming and suitable to be a strategist. All these different characters in a game will have an obvious effect on their behavior. For instance, among the games is a well known game known as the Neverwinter Nights which is a role playing game and its background are portrayed as the medieval times; the players of this virtual game carries out many risks (Lim, 2008). Moreover, this game also provides a free game engine where the players can modify or create their own maps, and even switch their roles and change their appearances etc. This kind of self design can lead to more successful learning (Robertson & Howells, 2008), but the object of their research was targeted on children and their focus was also not within the learning scope of higher education range. Apart from the games in teaching mentioned above, many scholars have been convinced that games can be helpful in teaching (Ebner & Holzinger, 2007; Robertson & Howells, 2008; Coller & Scott, 2009), in another interesting research we can see that games has quite a big effect in brainstorming where 27 undergraduates were tested with 3 types of computer games and the result showed that there were two games which required basic cognitive ability and knowledge (Quiroga et al., 2009). This shows that as long as a game is well designed, it possesses teaching abilities; therefore, the special designed teaching games can be helpful to students as it helps in carrying out and learning in classes. 3. Preliminary Design As mentioned earlier, the original concept of this research was proposed by Yeh et al. (2007) to make use of monopoly as an e-learning game for dynamic competitive strategy. This research extends this concept and the ultimate goal is to improve the design of monopoly mechanism so as to make it be closer to simulation of the
commercial activities in the real world while the original game-play method will be retained. The design of this platform can then be developed accordingly to train the students to learn the class objectives, such as dynamic decision-making, from the game. This complex research is made possible by the support of National Science Council in Taiwan, R.O.C. though a 3-years project fund. Within this multi-year project, the monopoly mechanism plays a relatively big role in the design of this game and allows this game platform to have a definite position and goal. Before introducing the core research design of this platform, the definition of monopoly mechanism and its interface are first introduced below. 3.1 Mechanism of monopoly The goal of this monopoly-mechanism online learning platform lies in the game engine of a graphical interface operation that enables the designer to design the game content of any intended themes. Therefore, the monopoly mechanism must be defined clearly so that the game engine possesses sufficient flexibility providing different game design options. In the definition of this research, a monopoly mechanism must include a few elements. First, the movements of the players must rely on the decision of the dice, i.e. the principle of win and lose in the game must depend on the decision of probability. Therefore, one research objective is to improve this pure probability-base game to be closer to commercial operations in the real world where the win and lose of the players will be determined more by whether or not the opponent’ s strategies and executions are defeated. Secondly, the rhythm of the game is based on the rounds. Apart from the auction where the seller has to allow other players to participate, the other movements of the players and between the players are not in synchronization with the actions of the game. Thirdly, the activities carried out between the players only involves the general commercial behaviors of human beings like buy, sell, auction and mortgage. This also means that the players only carry out the transactions in the game which is different from other games as it has no levels and the players are not submitted to death and whereas the win and lose is determined by the maximum amount of cash owned by a player. However, this research has taken into account the time constraint and therefore in the part of self designing the game engine, we have included a number of win-and-lose methods in our settings. For example, it can be a fixed number of rounds, determining win and lose by the maximum cash held by a player, or when the cash of a player becomes 0, and the game automatically coming to an end, etc.
The above mechanism is sufficient to design a monopoly game to attract Taiwan’ s college students. There are two similar recent examples of why customized monopoly game attracted students? the students at both Tsing-Hua University (http://www.nth u.edu.tw/allnews/news_content.htm?ID=4698) and Feng-Jia University (http://tw.ne ws.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/090707/8/1mmn1.html) happened to design paper-based monopoly games in June, 2009 by including the people, incidents and the objects of their universities within the games, which causes a best-seller effect within the campuses. The customized monopoly games are especially attracted to those students who are graduating and those teachers or faculty who are leaving their memorable schools. This shows that the popularity of monopoly still has its charm on the college students in Taiwan. Therefore, this research is convinced that if this monopoly mechanism is integrated with this game engine, it can result in the different styles of the game and matching them with different class requirements such that they can be helpful in class teaching. For instance, it can be used to design a game for military training classes which can provide for procurement of military resources, as well as a game for computer related courses where we can buy hardware devices or develop software, etc. 3.2 Description of the monopoly interface Since this research is still on the design phase of the entire three-year project period, all the game interface design screens are illustrated through self-drawn diagrams instead of the actual system screenshots. The main game interface is depicted in Fig. 1.for establishing the basic understanding of the game operation for reading Section 4. Principally, Fig. 1.can be classified into three parts as the chat window at the bottom, operating buttons on the top left and the 4 columns that displays information on the top right side. First, the chat window at the bottom is just like most of the games which is a place where communication takes place between the players. Then the operating buttons on the left side shows that a player has just entered the game through the GO button at the bottom. From Fig. 1.,we can see that there are still 3 more players who have not yet entered the game while player Jim has walked three steps after entering. The dotted circle in Fig. 1.represents the place that player Jim has walked on and the car icon represents his character in the game. Moreover, the small rectangle box at the top right side is used to display the round, player, economic growth and the time of the present match. Fig. 1 shows 4 boxes at the top right part which represents the player’ s situation, the
bank’ s situation, the up-to-date information column and the historical record column from top to bottom sequence. The third column in the diagram shows the current situation that Jim has earned 3 points in his dice and also since Jim has not yet taken any actions, so the first column still displays the same situation as when the game started, i.e., he possesses $15,000 cash and no land. Moreover in the next section, we shall discuss the detailed design of the monopoly-mechanism learning game platform so we shall remove the chat window and the other unnecessary parts so as to focus on the design element that we want to express.
Fig. 1. Main game interface. 4. The design of the teaching platform of online monopoly This section introduces the learning platform functions of the online monopoly-mechanism game. It mainly involves the two aspects of design in the mechanism and teaching management of the online game. From the aspect of the mechanism of online games, apart from necessarily being much closer to the simulation situations of commercial operations, it also has to attract the college
students enough for continuance use. In addition, since this platform integrates the game into the complete learning management environment, thereby allows the teachers to proceed with the related teaching management of the gaming operations on a more convenient basis, involving the course management, computations of final scores, independently designing the games and replaying the games, etc. Owing to this research being at the stage of the end of initial design, thereby here below we shall introduce the detailed diagrams for the illustrative purpose only, which is yet to implement the actual interface of the this system. 4.1 Mechanism of online games On the aspect of game designing, apart from retaining the mechanism of traditional game of monopoly, it becomes more necessary to achieve the teaching purposes applied by the different courses. Therefore, we shall take the “ Monopoly of Real Estates”as the theme for our foundation, explaining how the fun game learning can be closer to the real-world situation, such that students playing this game may feel situating in the real situations and make suitable investment decisions. We further hope that the solutions to the design issues described below may easily achieve the purpose of the theme of other game contents to attract the teacher’ s adoption through the simple engine of the monopoly-mechanism platform. This following subsection introduces the solutions of the seven design issues, including the mechanism of business cycle, the points and numbers of the dices, the upgrade of the properties, the chance and destiny model, the mechanism of buy-and-sell, the mechanism of mortgage and auction. In every design issue, we initially point out the reasons for the necessary alterations to be taken into account, and then propose the solutions for the design, and sometimes even illustrate the solutions with the graphical pictures to give a clearer expression of the design. 4.1.1 Mechanism of Business Cycle In real life, the prices of commodities, the stock rates, and the house rates, each of them changes along with time. Such kind of invisible business cycle does not appear in the traditional monopoly game because all the prices of the land and the houses, as well as some expenses or incomes are fixed. The ways to solve the deficiencies of the business cycle can be very complex, but by just taking advantage of simple random-number simulation, the initial influence of the business cycle that has to be taken into account are provided while making the decision. Therefore, this research adopts two simple random functions to produce a variable in order to achieve this concept, i.e. change frequent and change rate. The change-frequent function represents after how many rounds the business cycle changes while the change-rate
function represents the fluctuation rates each time the business cycle changes. Even though the change rate is stated in accordance with the random function every time, but we can select the upper limit while setting the function. For example, when the upper limit of change rate is set to 10% and the random number determines the next frequent rate to be 5, it means that after 5 rounds, the business changes and the change rate lies between -10% and 10%. All the money related capitalized cost or revenue in the game must be multiplied by (1+n%), where {n | n ≧ -10 and n ≦ 10}. Through this way we may express that the price of the commodities fluctuates according to the business cycle, and thus the students playing this game must be able to perceive the impact caused by the business cycle so as to be considered it during their decision-making processes. Because such a mechanism is concealed in the game, we will see the illustrative diagram later in the game design in section 4.2.2. 4.1.2 The points and numbers of the dices In traditional monopoly, the number of dices is fixed. This kind of design is not entirely reasonable. A person with enough wealth or a person with strong investing ambitions, in real life, may not be succumbed to fixed pointing norms. The number and points of dices in the game maybe reflected in, for example, the maximum number of board section a person can move each time, and the number of items or the range of the amount of money that appears on the chance-destiny section. Therefore, as per the number of dices in this gaming platform, we allow the designers to lay out some rules to set up a different number of dice, thereby allowing a player to proceed with the game using a different number of dices under different circumstances. In fact, this objective can be achieved using a simple dice function Dice ( α,β)with two parameters αand β. The parameter αrepresents the number of dices, and the parameter βrepresents the norms of the dice. These two functions can be altered while designing the game according to the different designs of the designers. In the two sections below, one may apply this function to allow a game to be more substantial and with more variations. 4.1.3 Upgrade of the properties In traditional monopoly games, the upgrade of the properties refers to build the houses, which is allowed to be only one house at a time, but in real life, one is not limited to the number of houses that one wants to build. Therefore, the improved monopoly
game is flexible number of upgrades. Fig. 2.shows the player proceeding with the flexible upgrade design while purchasing a property. The red outline on the grid at the bottom of the game board implies that player Jim has landed on his own property, i.e. Kaohsiung City, and he has selected the action of upgrading his property. The window shown in the centre of the board allows the player to enter the number of upgrades he wants to make on his property. The Fig. shows that the player has entered 2 times thereby the total cash is $100*2. But one has to keep in mind that the number of upgrades cannot exceed the number of buildings posted by the bank and from the Fig. it is clear that the bank sets a maximum of 25 buildings per property. Moreover, the required cost of the upgrades should not exceed one’ s cash in hand and therefore such a method can allow a player’ s investment strategies to be more substantial and with more variations.
Fig. 2. A player upgrading his property. 4.1.4 The model of chance and destiny In traditional monopoly, the function of chance and destiny is to effectively increase the endurance of the game, and not solely about throwing dices and investing. In our opinion, the rewards and punishments received through the traditional chance and destiny are fixed which makes the game relatively dull and very soon the player looses the attraction to play further.
Therefore, apart from the mechanism of business cycle change rate for an automatic fine-tuning, the dices can be rolled to adjust the number of times of rewards or punishments, thereby attaining a different outcome by multiplying it with a constant. Fig. 3 shows that when a player walks on chance or destiny which results in the change of his cash or position, he must select the window in the centre of the board to get the points of the dice in order to determine the total cash of his reward or punishment. In Fig. 3, at the bottom left of the game, the red outlined box shows that Jim has walked on chance and after clicking the orange window in the center, he has received a fine of 1,000 and also from the Information Box and Record at the right bottom of the game, we can see the process.
Fig. 3. Chance and Destiny. 4.1.5 Mechanism of buy and sell In real life, the so called real estate investment means buying a land at a low price and selling it at a high price, and with a precise vision of the appreciation of the land in the near future, one may earn the price differences by selling the land at a high point. However, the traditional monopoly game does not apply such a function of being able to sell the land to the bank. Therefore, this research has added the function of being able to sell in order to feel more like the actual business practices of human beings.
Apart from allowing the players to be able to sell their lands, this game produces a similar concept of buying at low rates and selling at high rates as a result of the business cycle. From Fig. 3, one may have noticed the top right box which shows the current status of the economy, where the economic value shows as +8%, which also represents that there will be a slight increase in the value of all the current assets. Suppose that a player had purchased a land when the economic value was -1%, therefore if he sells the land now, he can earn from the price differences thereby achieving the effect of buying at low rates and selling at high rates. 4.1.6 The mechanism of mortgage In the official monopoly game of the Parker Brothers (http://www.hasbro.com/-monopoly/en_US/), the function of mortgage is to allow the players to temporarily transfer the ownership of a property to the Central Bank thereby possessing a lower value of the property in compared to its actual value; moreover, when other players walks on the mortgaged land, they do not have to pay tolls. Therefore, through mortgage, the players undergoes cash flow, allowing his cash in hand to increase, or when the players do not have enough cash, the game automatically compels him to mortgage his property.
Fig. 4. Redeeming the mortgaged property. This research holds that this function is a very necessary requirement for the proposed
learning platform of this game. Fig. 4 shows that the player has redeemed the prior mortgaged property. Moreover, while designing this game, apart from being compelled to undergo mortgage while facing bankruptcy due to monetary loss. During the player’ s round, he can increase his cash in hand by undergoing mortgage before rolling his dice. From the Fig. we can see that player Jim is on the top grid and before he rolls his dice, the Mortgage button below is clickable. If the player has already rolled his dice, the Mortgage button becomes gray which means that it is not clickable, just as it is shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3. 4.1.7 Auction The monopoly game in general does not have the function of auction, but the game made by the Parker Brothers includes such a function. The function of auction designed by the Parker Brothers allows a player to choose between buying a property that he walks on or to use the auction function to invite all the players to participate in the auction activity. Since auction fits with the real life situation, therefore it is worthy for it to be included in the game.
Fig. 5. Player John bids for the auction. This research while referring to the auction function has added its improved features in the gaming platform. The main function is to be able to carry out auction for the player’ s property which is quite different from the auction provided by the Parker
Brothers, yet it is much closer to the situations faced by the real estate owners. It is described in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 as follows: Fig. 5 represents that player Jim has taken out his property for auction thereby allowing all the players to be able to bid. On the other hand, player John has entered a cash value of $1,200 in the window that has appeared in the center of his game. If a bidder is not willing to participate in the auction, he can click on the pass button. Moreover, the bidding time lasts only for 20 seconds and when the countdown comes to an end, the game shall enter the end of the bidding session and announce the bidding winner as in Fig. 5.
Fig. 6. Players bid for auction–announces bidding winner. 4.2 Teaching management design Apart from hoping to stimulate the college students with the popularizing online game mechanism, the goal of this learning platform is also expected to be able to enhance the integrity of the teaching functionality, making it convenient for the teachers to use it during class thereby increasing its usability and the possibility of being used by them. Therefore, this section will introduce the in-depth design of the teaching application in the entire platform, including class management, games design, replay of the games, team mechanism and score calculation mechanism. 4.2.1 Class management Online games learning platform must be the same as the online learning platform,
providing an environment for operating a course and an assignment for the teachers and the students. The design of this platform is that the teachers are required to sign up for an account to have appropriate authority to build a course and also to be able to add assignments within a course and choose different games and settings for the assignments. The students can register for an account to be a member to be able to sign in and choose a variety of courses offered by different teachers, but they can only be able to access a course and participate in its gaming assignments after the approval of the respective teacher. Fig. 7.represents a brief use case diagram showing how the users use this class management system with related process illustration.
Fig. 7. Use case diagram of class management subsystem. 4.2.2 Game design During the initial stage of designing, this research aimed towards having different themes for the monopoly mechanism teaching game in order to operate in coordination with the different course teaching and therefore the concept of a game engine came into being. With the hope that the teachers could design their games in a more convenient and a simpler way, therefore we have adopted a game engine with a graphical interface. As mentioned before, this game comprises of the mechanism of monopoly, grid, mechanism of rounds, and simple buy-and-sell interactions. The game itself is like a human body which must have bones and skeleton to build up the
entire bone structure of the game, and blood to enrich the contents of the game, complex nervous system to ensure whether the soul of the entire game is functioning smoothly. Under this concept, this research classifies the design of this game into 4 parts, i.e. Basic, Grid, Special Grid and Mechanism; moreover Fig. 8 shows the design interface of Grid.
Fig. 8. Design interface of Grid. We can change the page shown at the top of the interface to make settings for different parts. As per Basic, it is mainly used to set the theme title of the game, the game-over rules, the size of the grid, and so on. While in Grid, we can design the corresponding pictures, titles and transaction price for every grid. Therefore, by selecting the small map on the bottom left we can make settings to different grid. The so-called Special Grid is different from the general grids used for transaction purposes. When the players walk on such a grid, an incident, such as change in the property value, or change in the present location of a player, occurs. Finally, Mechanism is like the soul of the game. The idea of its interface is shown in Fig. 9. It includes the settings of a number of game constants, such as the use of the mechanism of business cycle, the settings of the upgrades of the transaction grids in the game, the tolls and
fees for walking on a particular grid in the game, the starting cash of the game and the settings of the reward for completing a round in the game, and so on.
Fig. 9. The design interface of Mechanism. 4.2.3 The function of game replay Like the game of Go, the players can review their previous mistakes or learn by observing the opponents thereby enhancing their own strength. Therefore this teaching game platform also hopes to include the step-by-step replay function so as to enhance its teaching goals. By replaying the whole match, the teachers and the students can discuss it during class or can even observe it privately.
Fig. 10. The interface of game replay. This function saves the detailed record or every player ’ s steps in a database to be used for future replay. Fig. 10.shows us the design interface of the replay function: the list at the bottom of the picture has the function of play, pause, forward, rewind, adjusting the playback speed and quit replay. The Fig. 11.below represents class diagram of the design of the database schema which is required to be saved by the replay function. By arranging all the events during a match and the list of the events column to be saved, we have designed a complete database for the replay function in accordance with the scope of the events list. Basically, the design of this research is relatively similar to that of the game of Go which plays every event as a unit one by one. The so-called event includes the possible number of events in every round. Furthermore, the segmentation of the events is a difficult task; therefore here we shall segment in accordance with the standard of every move. The movements include the rolling of the dice, buy, sell, auction and the mortgage events. Therefore, every event includes the three key elements, i.e. the description before the moves and the system reaction of the moves and after the moves. For example, player Jim purchases Kaohsiung City for $1,200, this whole event includes the move of purchasing Kaohsiung City which can be divided into three parts - player Jim, purchase of Kaohsiung City, and spending of $1,200. The same way, “ player John rolls 5 points and walks on Pingtung City” , can also be divided into three parts, i.e. player John, rolls 5 points and walks on Pingtung City. Therefore, we can make a design class diagram of the database schema of the replay function through this concept.
Fig. 11. Design class diagram of database schema. 4.2.4 Team mechanisms Since this is an online game learning platform, the model of freely teaming up must be taken into consideration as well as the concept of the teachers designing games for their students. In principle, the different rules for the students teaming up to play a game can be set up by the teachers, for example, the teachers can assign 4 students in a team or even set a rule where 4-8 students can freely join in a team. The mechanism of freely setting up teams must be a default to the students possessing a guest account because they still do not have an official account and the right to choose courses. In the design of team mechanism, if the teachers automatically assign the members, they can assign according to the student number or the number assigned by the system in accordance with the first or the last digit of the n number of students (Rule 1), or in accordance with the even and odd numbers related to the students no. (Rule 2). Therefore, this teaching platform must provide such a rule interface for the teachers to make settings.
Fig. 12. Individual game room. If it was to allow students to freely team up, after the teachers set up for m~n students to be assigned as a team in the round interface, the system must provide for the free space for the function of teaming up in a typical online game, thereby allowing the students to go online and ask classmates to join a particular space in order to play
online game together within the time of their assigned tasks. The Fig. 12 as below represents the interface after a player opens his own room thereby allowing other players to join. 4.2.5 Score calculation mechanism After the students complete their game assignments, the teachers must assess their performance and give scores accordingly. How to transfer the results of a team match to scores is a big challenge. This research is not able to decide the performance scores of the students, but it can set up some assessment rules for the teachers which can help them transfer the student’ s performance into scores. Based on the game results there may be team rankings or the total of the various assets that each student possesses, these indicators can be incorporated into the rules for transferring into the scores of the student’ s performance. The so-called rules are the variables that you would like to use as comparison for calculating the scores in your settings, thereafter set the highest score and the scores gradually decreasing behind it in order to produce a really simple rule. For example, the total cash in the game is taken as the basic variable for the reference of transferring into scores, the highest score is set to be 100 and the decreasing method is to decrease by 1 point each time, therefore this results in a rule where the sequence is like the person holding the maximum cash has a score of 100 followed by those with 1 points less. In this way, by applying different reference variables, with the parameters of highest score and decreasing score, it can result in many different rules.
Fig. 13. Score calculation mechanism. The game engine designed a way to quickly provide an interface of assignment results to the students as shown in Fig. 13, where the teachers only need to select class,
assignment and rule, and then click on the Submit bottom at the bottom left of the picture to automatically attain a result. The three parameters forming a rule, i.e. Variable, Highest score and Dec range, allows the teachers to add different rules, which is done only by selecting these 3 parameters and clicking on Upgrade button, a new rule can be added immediately above the column. In the bottom left part of the diagram, X axis represents the result after the student has passed through the sequence of the Variable value, while Y axis represents the scores. This diagram is taken as the illustration diagram for this score calculation mechanism. 5. Conclusions and Future Work The present business simulation games focus more on the teaching goals, and thus their insufficient playfulness has lead to unexpectedly low adoption and continuance use of the college teachers and students in higher education. This research proposed using the popular monopoly game mechanism as the core for designing an online learning platform such that any subjects can be designed via the graphical-interface game engine. In particular, this paper has shown that Monopoly game-mechanism can be improved to simulate real-world situations for enhancing the effectiveness of student learning. Furthermore, with integrated class management functions, it allows the teachers to use this online learning platform easily in their class, and thereby enhancing the adoption and continuance use of the students and the teachers. From the discussion of the various design issues, the adoption of design solutions and the explanation of the illustration diagram in this paper, we believe it has provided convincing evidence through its design process showing that such an online monopoly learning platform is feasible. In the near future, in addition to actually develop such a monopoly-mechanism online learning game platform and implement it in the classroom formal learning, formal assessments of the initial learning effectiveness can be conducted. In particular, this research also hopes to verify the observation of Robertson & Howells (2007) that whether the college students will show motivation and enthusiasm while learning game designing thereby improving the standards of high achievements or including the skills of independent learning, team learning, associated and applied learning as the new context. In other words, in addition to be a learning platform like a commercial online game platform that allows all the teacher and students in Taiwan as well as in other places taking advantage of its ready-to-use teaching activities, the long-term objective of this online game platform can also be used as a research platform for increasing its added value. Researches such as exploring the mental models of the teachers and the students using the online learning games, and the users’behavior and physiological
factors can be conducted in this experimental platform. REFERENCES Charlton, J. P. and Danforth, I. D. W. 2007. Distinguishing addiction and high engagement in the context of online game playing. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 1531-1548. Cheng, H. N. H., Wu, W. M. C., Liao, C. C. Y. and Chan, T. W. 2009. Equal opportunity tactic: Redesigning and applying competition games in classrooms. Computers & Education, 53(3), 866-876 Coller, B. D. and Scott, M. J. 2009. Effectiveness of using a video game to teach a course in mechanical engineering. Computers & Education, 53(3), 900–912 Cone, B. D., Irvine, C. E., Thompson, M. F. and Nguyen, T. D. 2007. A video game for cyber security training and awareness. Computers & Security, 26(1), 63-72 Ebner, M. and Holzinger, A. 2007. Successful implementation of user-centered game based learning in higher education: An example from civil engineering. Computers & Education, 49(3), 873-890 Eow, Y. L., Ali, W. Z. b. W., Mahmud, R. bt. and Baki, R. 2009. For m ones t ude nt s ’ engagement with computer games and its effect on their academic achievement in a Malaysian secondary school. Computers & Education, doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.05.013 Fu, F. L., Su, R. C. and Yu, S. C. 2009. EGa me Fl ow:A s c a l et ome a s ur el e a r ne r s ’ enjoyment of e-learning games. Computers & Education, 52(1), 101-112 Lim, C. P. 2008. Spirit of the game: Empowering students as designers in schools. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(6), 996–1003. Prensky, M. 2008a. Students as designers and creators of educational computer games: Who else? British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(6), 1004–1019. Prensky, M. 2008b. The Role of Technology in teaching and the classroom. Educational Technology, Nov-Dec 2008 Robertson, J. and Howells, C. 2008. Computer game design: Opportunities for successful learning. Computers & Education, 50(2), 559–578. Tao, Y.-H., Cheng, C. J. and Sun, S. Y. 2009. What influences college students to continue using business simulation games? The Taiwan experience. Computers & Education, 53(3), 929-939. Virvou, M. and Katsionis, G. 2008. On the usability and likeability of virtual reality games for education: The case of VR-ENGAGE. Computers & Education, 50(1), 154-178 Yeh, C. R., Tao, Y. H., Hong, T. P., Lin, W. Y., Chen, P. C., Wu, C. H., and Lin, J. 2007. Adapting Monopoly as an Intelligent Learning Game for Teaching
Dynamic Competitive Strategy. The 2007 International joint Conference on e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society and e-Education, August 15-17, 2007, Hong Kong.
