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Packet Tracer as an Educational Serious Gaming Platform

Authors:
Ammar Musheer
Oleg Sotnikov
Shahram Shah Heydari

Keywords: Packet Tracer; Serious Gaming; Multiuser; Collaborative; Cisco Networking Academy; Emerging Teaching Methods; Simulation; Online Teaching

Abstract:
Serious gaming is quickly becoming an important trend in education, as it provides an interactive as well as enjoyable environment for learning various technology, business and scientific topics. The main objective of this research is to explore the possibility of using Cisco packet tracer’s multiuser capability to develop several interactive, multiuser games for teaching networking topics and assessing students skills in the class. We present a list of primary principles for design of such games, and design two multiuser educational games as in-class activities to showcase the benefits of our approach. We demonstrate how students’ skills in important network topics such as routing, remote access and security help them succeed in these games. We also provide test results to evaluate the performance of packet tracer in handling multiuser traffic in this scenario.

Pages: 299 to 305

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: May 22, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4006

ISBN: 978-1-61208-133-5

Location: Venice/Mestre, Italy

Dates: from May 22, 2011 to May 27, 2011