Edventure: Gamification for collaborative problem design and solving

In this paper, we develop the game-based system Edventure that transforms the tedious homework or in-class exercise into a game, where students compete with each other through preparing and solving problems. Edventure has many advantages over traditional homework, e.g., cooperative learning and less routines for the homework preparation. Most importantly, the system elevates the students' motivations and enables them to yield better learning outcome by actively doing their homework. Specifically, while students apply the knowledge when solving problems in traditional homework, in Edventure they have to prepare problems for their peers, which requires the skill like analysis, evaluation and creation. Compared with applying, evaluating and creating belong to higher cognitive levels in the revised Bloom's taxonomy. We adopt Edventure in the course Differential Equation to demonstrate its efficacy. From the evaluation results, around 70% students learn cooperatively and solve more homework problems when using Edventure.