Learning through NFC-enabled urban adventure: User experience findings

This paper presents a mobile context-sensitive learning concept called the Amazing NFC, and reports the findings and results of a field study where 228 students experienced the Amazing NFC urban adventure during spring 2008. The Amazing NFC concept is an amazing race -style survival game for teenagers for learning skills and knowledge essential to everyday life and familiarising them with their hometown. During the Amazing NFC lessons, students were guided through an urban adventure track with the help of NFC mobile phone, site-specific NFC tags located at eleven control points and related mobile Internet content. Trial aimed to analyze touch-based interaction paradigm directed to specific users in a defined context as an implementation technique for mobile learning. User experiences and added value evoked by the service concept were investigated via a variety of data collection methods. Findings revealed that students experienced the NFC technology as easy and effortless to use. However, users hoped to see more challenges and activity in the track in the future. Our analysis indicates that one main benefit of the urban adventure concept was moving the learning experience from the traditional classroom to a novel context-sensitive learning environment that includes social interaction between students. (24 refs.)