Yeh, R. C., Tao, Y.-H., Hong, T.-P., Lin, W.-Y., Chen, P.-C., Wu, C.-H., and Lin, J., Adapting Monopoly as an Intelligent Learning Game for Teaching Dynamic Competitive Strategy, The 2007 International joint Conference of e-CASE, e-Commerce, e-Administration and e-Education, Hong Kong, August 15-17.
Using Monoploy Game to Learn Strategy Competition in A College Course Rosa C. Yeha*, Yu-Hui Taob, Thong-Pei Hongc, Wen-Yang Linc, Pi-Chi Chend, Chun-Hsin Wuc, Jerry Line a
Department of Business Management, I-Shou University, 1, Section 1, Hsiuh-Chen Road, Ta-Hsu Hsiang, Kaohsiung County, Kaohsiung 833, Taiwan b
c
Department of Information Management, Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National University of Kaohsiung, 700 Kaohsiung University Road, Kaohsiung 811, Taiwan
d
Department of Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University, 116, Heping 1st Rd., Lingya District, Kaohsiung City 802, Taiwan
e
Department of Computer Science, National Cheng-Kung University, 1, University Road, Tainan City701, Taiwan *Corresponding Author:
[email protected]
ABSTRACT Any business companies must face competitions, thus competitive strategy is an important subject in Business Management education. However, the complexity of dynamic competition and the non-experimental property of business strategies made learning competitive strategy a bottleneck in school classes. Using Monopoly-like games to simulate the competitive strategies used among the business corporations with proper instructional design principles may provide students a no-risk environment for practicing business competition, which should assist students empirically validate course theories and empirically absorb learning-by-doing learning effects.
We have incorporated the traditional Monopoly game in class activities in two Junior college classes, which received positive initial feedback from students. However, the traditional monopoly game, whether paper-based or computer-based, is not convenient and effective for instructional purpose. Therefore, a digital “ Strategy Monopoly”online game can not only achieve the learning motivation, feedback and effect of a digital learning game and computer simulation, but also collect students’ learning-path data for designing adaptive learning strategies for students with different ability levels or learning styles. The large volume of learning-path data can be stored in a data warehouse to be used with data mining techniques for validating the effectiveness of competitive strategy theories or can be served as a basis for designing an intelligent learning module embedded within the Monopoly online game for consulting students to play the game onsite or helping students learning the game when needed. Based on the above motivation, we have assembled a development team with cross disciplinary in Business Administration, Education, Information Management, and Computer Sciences to propose a Strategy Monopoly learning game for Taiwan’ s National Science Council funding. Based on the collaboration efforts, we have proposed an integrated research project to design the Strategy Monopoly game for strategy competitive perspective, to develop the online game from system development perspective, and to design the intelligent tutoring component from the computer technology perspective. We have first executed an in-depth analysis for justifying the need for such an online Strategy Monopoly game for business education from the pedagogy methods used in Taiwan’ s business education, the characteristics of business competitive strategies, the challenge of teaching business competitive strategy, experiential learning and game applied in business education, and market status of Monopoly computer games. With the understanding from the literature analysis, we conducted an initial design focusing on the basic functionality of the learning game and the intelligent tutoring component from both short-term and long-term goals. An UML (Uniform Modeling Language) case diagram was used to explain how the system administrator, teacher and student actors are interacting with three modules of system management setup, game management and learning game system. A conceptual diagram for depicting the relationship of learning-path data warehouse and data mining was used to explain the applications of advanced information technology in instructional purpose of learning game, which is very different from the intelligent tutoring learning scenarios for traditional online or e-learning context. Finally, we proposed using Java language, MySQL database, Linux operations system and Appach Web server for this learning game environment. In particular, using Java is justified for current impressions of not
efficient than C++ and for future scalability and flexibility. For short-term goal, this development project aims to complete a prototype game learning system that integrates learning strategies and fun learning environment, such that teachers can easily design and setup game parameters for students to learn by playing the desirable learning objectives in strategy management context. On the other hand, embedded learning content, game path data collection and mining, and rule editing management allow teachers to easily design their course activities for naturally integrating into students’game playing process for targeted effects. Long-term goals can be multiple dimension. In game design, versatile strategy context can be adapted to different management courses. In game development, the 2D multiple-innings game can be extend into 3D instant game or mobile phone device environment. Besides, this game can be evolved into a game engine or middleware to be adopted by other game development for great time saving template, or to a point-to-point online game environment to distribute the server load into different local servers for satisfying large number of users simultaneously playing this game. In learning assistant, in addition to provide related strategy learning materials, online strategy analysis and recommendation, and self-learning computer agent as the playmate can be developed to advance the learning assistant level.
Keyword: Strategy Management, Monopoly, Learning Game, Learning Path REFERENCES Hung, T. W., A Data Mining Case Study in the Underwear Industry for CRM Applications, Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Business and Information, CD-Format, Singapore, July 12-14, 2006. Lo, S. K., Wang, C. C. and Fang, W. 2005. Physical Interpersonal Relationships and Social Anxiety among Online Game Players” , CyberPsychology and Behavior, 8 (1), 15-20. Schierholz, R., Glissmann, S., Kolbe, L. M., and Brenner, W. 2006. Don’ tcall us, we’ ll call you –Performance Measurement in Multi-Channel Environments, Journal of Information Science and Technology, 3 (2), 44-61. Yu, C. S. and Lin, Y. W., Differentiating Strategy of online banking Service Quality, Proceedings of the 7th Annual Global Information Technology Management Association World Conference, CD-Format, Orlando, Florida, USA, June 11-13 2006.
