Can rote memorization be fun? A game shell for concept matching with Java and XML

The concepts of some of the most popular games can be extended to become suitable as a presentation shell that can accommodate a wide variety of educational contents. As an example the popular "Concentration" board game was implemented as a Java applet that permits the teacher to define the underlying tasks independently in XML form based on an expressive grammar. The tasks can be accumulated within a database and lessons can be defined through filtering the database based on keywords, difficulty levels and other task attributes. Preliminary experience indicates that such a game can not only replace regular exams, but also be employed as a learning tool without sacrificing its appeal as a game. To help clarify the students\´ user models the game will be augmented by an "observer" module that records all the student interactions and an "analyzer" module that displays graphs summarizing the interactions.