Previous research has illustrated the importance of acquiring knowledge from authentic contexts; however, without full engagement, students' learning performance might not be as good as expected. In this study, a Team Competition-based Ubiquitous Gaming approach was proposed for improving students' learning effectiveness in authentic learning activities. An experiment on a natural science course was carried out in an elementary school to evaluate the effects of the approach on students' awareness of collaboration, communication and collective efficacy. Moreover, the students' learning behavioral patterns were explored by analyzing their interactive logs in the discussion forum. The experimental results indicated that, in addition to learning achievements, the proposed approach significantly enhanced the students' collective efficacy as well as their awareness of collaboration and communication; moreover, the students who learned with the proposed approach showed more effective behavioral patterns than those who learned with conventional team-based ubiquitous learning.