The Chronicles of Knowledge: Learning with a Tabletop Game

Even if largely acknowledged for their capacity to build learning solutions, computer games are often accused to discourage face-to-face social interactions. Pervasive game-based technologies can overcome these limits and are commonly expected to gain widespread usage for educational purposes. Board games, in particular, are intrinsically collective and their augmented versions can thus be used for training, adding up the advantages of computer game-based learning with those originating from live interaction and communication. The paper presents the ongoing project to develop an educational augmented tabletop game named “The Chronicles of Knowledge” to be used in blended learning path. The game is described, explaining its gameplay, the narrative and the visual aspects. Scopes of the research are explained, focusing on what are the objectives of study. Partial results of the testing sessions that started on March 2015 are reported, illustrating conclusion and future work to come in the next steps of the project.