In the context of European Higher Education students face an increasing focus on independent, individual learning—at the expense of face-to-face interaction. Hence learners are, all too often, not provided with enough opportunities to negotiate in the target language. The current case study aims to address this reality by going beyond conventional approaches to provide students with a hybrid game-based app, combining individual and collaborative learning opportunities. The 4-week study was carried out with 104 German language students (A1.2 CEFR) who had previously been enrolled in a first-semester A1.1 level course at a Spanish university. The VocabTrainerA1 app—designed specifically for this study—harnesses the synergy of combining individual learning tasks and a collaborative murder mystery game in a hybrid level-based architecture. By doing so, the app provides learners with opportunities to apply their language skills to real-life-like communication. The purpose of the study was twofold: on one hand we aimed to measure learner motivation, perceived usefulness and added value of hybrid game-based apps; on the other, we sought to determine their impact on language learning. To this end, we conducted focus group interviews and an anonymous Technology Acceptance Model survey (TAM). In addition, students took a pre-test and a post-test. Scores from both tests were compared with the results obtained in first-semester conventional writing tasks, with a view to measure learning outcomes. The study provides qualitative and quantitative data supporting our initial hypotheses. Our findings suggest that hybrid game-based apps like VocabTrainerA1—which seamlessly combine individual and collaborative learning tasks—motivate learners, stimulate perceived usefulness and added value, and better meet the language learning needs of today’s digital natives. In terms of acceptance, outcomes and sustainability, the data indicate that hybrid game-based apps significantly improve proficiency, hence are indeed, effective tools for enhanced language learning.

With increasing globalization, foreign language skills have become one of the main requirements when applying for a job in leading ICT companies. Due to their ubiquity and multi-functionality, mobile devices allow teachers to provide technology-friendly students with highly dynamic learning contents in line with their lifestyle. Unfortunately, most of the available APPs still support a mainly one-way interaction (teacher to learner or computer-client interaction). The authors have designed an APP based on a highly interactive, ubiquitous and constructive learning approach. The current paper illustrates firstly how the APP has helped learners to get actively involved in their own learning process sharing and assessing their foreign language knowledge. And secondly, how students' logs can be used to automate the assessment of different skills such as the ability to explain terms in a foreign language or to assess definitions created by other game players.

The widespread adoption of computers and Internet in our life has reached the classrooms, where computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) based on wikis offers new ways of collaboration and encourages student participation. When the number of contributions from students increases, traditional assessment procedures of e-learning settings suffer from scalability problems. In a wiki-based learning experience, automatic tools are required to support the assessment of such huge amounts of data. In this work, we present StatMediaWiki, a tool that collects and aggregates information that helps to analyze a MediaWiki installation. It generates charts, tables and different statistics enabling easy analysis of wiki evolution. We have used StatMediaWiki in a Higher Education course and present the results obtained in this case study.

Whilst in recent years there has been an increasing trend to design mobile APPs for foreign language learning, most of the available APPs support mainly one way teacher-to-learner interaction and use mobile devices to deliver content rather than encouraging learners to interact amongst each other. To address this lack and to provide learners with more versatile opportunities to communicate amongst each other, by sharing, assessing and co-constructing their knowledge, we designed an APP based on a highly interactive, ubiquitous and constructive learning approach. This means that learning contents are not just being delivered to our learners but, instead of this, they are being integrated into versatile tasks that although individually performed, affect the community of learners. The current paper presents our first experience using the Guess it! Language Trainer APP. Firstly, we detail how the APP was used to support students' language learning outside the classroom, secondly, how it helped learners to get actively involved in their own learning process by adding themselves content to the knowledge base, and thirdly, we show how the data on students' usage of the APP and participation in the learning process is used to automate the assessment of different competences by the language instructor. A pre-posttest comparison showed very good results on students' language acquisition. This is complemented with the analysis of the system logs that highlight firstly, that students dedicated to playing the APP much longer time than we estimate they usually employ for independent learning and secondly, that they significantly improved their learning outcomes whilst using the APP. Additionally, other objective indicators on proficiency of other skills such as the ability to explain terms in a foreign language or the competence to assess definitions of mates were obtained automatically.