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Interactive
and Adaptive Competence Development
This work package focused
on developing a sound psycho-pedagogical framework for
educational games by integrating models of adaptive
personalized learning with those of adaptive interactive
storytelling. This framework is mainly built on the
three pillars cognition, motivation, and storytelling.
The first pillar cognition seems to be obviously important
for game-based learning, because the major purpose of
an instructional game should be that it teaches something.
Therefore established theories and approaches in cognitive
psychology need to be surveyed that are suitable for
the application in educational games, and essential
implications for the design of these games should be
drawn. The same applies to approaches of motivational
psychology, since motivational aspects are crucial for
effective learning. The last pillar integrates narrative/storytelling
in the field of game-based learning, feasible to enhance
immersion and engagement of the learner and extensively
used in commercial computer games to attract players.
Considering these three pillars in the elaboration of
a theoretical framework for educational adaptation enables
adapting educational games to a specific user in a specific
learning situation
Non-invasive Assessment
The very basis of a non-invasive, continuous assessment
of learning progress and motivational states is to monitor
and interpret the learner’s behavior in the game.
To achieve this, we utilize the formal framework of
Competence-based Knowledge Space Theory (CbKST). Originating
from conventional adaptive and personalized tutoring,
this set-theoretic framework allows assumptions about
the structure of skills of a domain of knowledge and
to link the latent skills with observable behavior.
It provides an internal cognition-based logic that is
quite similar to the logic of ontologies: well-defined
entities (the skills) are in a well-defined relationship
(a so-called prerequisite relation). The domain model,
the set of meaningful skill states, and the resulting
set of meaningful learning paths are combined with a
model of tasks and problems within certain parts, so-called
learning missions, of the game (equivalent to conventional
“learning objects”), the so-called problem
space.
In the project we addressed two crucial aspects, on
the one hand technical limitations due to a high computational
load and, on the other hand, we concentrated on the
assessment of motivational states of learners, gamers,
and learners in educational gaming situations. The conceptual
research work was accompanied by computer simulations
to investigate feasibility and correctness of the approach.
A strong focus of our work in the project concerned
motivational aspects, in particular an autonomous, non-invasive
assessment of motivational states - aiming at the development
of a comprehensive higher level adaptive framework usable
for intelligent adaptation in educational games and
extending the state of the art for adaptive educational
technology. Theoretical work focused on finding and
systematizing concepts and theories of motivation psychology
suitable for the field of game-based learning. This
effort aims for the integration of motivational concepts
in a broad framework for the development of educational
games, and more precisely for finding ways of motivational
adaptation.
Adaptive psycho-pedagogical
interventions
In addition to assessing the learner’s cognitive
or motivational states, appropriate and tailored interventions
must be enabled to be autonomously performed by the
system. As important as it is to avoid comprising the
game’s flow by assessing learning progress or
motivational state, are interventions embedded in the
game. Interventions are hints, suggestions, warnings,
or feedback. We concluded, classified, and systematized
the following general types of interventions:
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Educational
interventions provide the learner with specific
information (i.e., skills) if the system concludes
that the related skills are lacking. In the game
context such interventions can come for example
from non-player characters.
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Problem solving
support and guidance provides the learners with
information about their current state in the game-related
problem solving process. To give an example, if
the system detects that a number of actions did
not decrease the distance between the present
problem solution state and the target state, the
system can trigger a hint that suits the present
problem solving state.
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Meta-cognitive
interventions are supposed to foster reflection
about the learner’s own abilities, confidence,
or self-esteem. A typical realization of such
intervention type is to let a non-player character
(NPC) ask specific questions like “are you
sure?” or “why did you do that?”.
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Assessment interventions
are a special form of intervention. If the probabilistic
assessment (of either learning progress or motivation)
does not lead to clear results after a certain
number of actions, the system can trigger interactions
to improve the assessment. Typically this can
be realized by providing the learner with different
problems/tasks or by specific questions through
an NPC.
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Dissolving interventions
are a further form to provide the learner with
specific information. The purpose of this intervention
type is to provide the learner with the solution
of a problem/task if the learner wasn’t
able to do so within a reasonable number of actions.
Such interventions, ultimately, shall assure that
the game can continue even if the learner is not
able to solve a problem/task. Of course, for didactical
reasons, this intervention type might not be used
for all problems/tasks.
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Motivational
interventions are supposed to retain the learner’s
motivation on a high level or to intervene when
the system detects that the motivational states
(potentially) decreases. Forms of such interventions
are feedback, praise, incitation, encouragement,
or directing attribution of success or failure
(from a motivational point of view the learner
should attribute success to his/her own abilities
and failure to external components such as bad
luck). |
All interventions of
a game require a manifestation in form of game assets
(e.g., a sound file with a specific sentence). Of course,
not all possible interventions can be realized. In general,
we pursue and propose an approach of using interventions
conservatively or sparingly. We are perfectly aware
that repeated inadequate interventions due to misinterpretations
of a situation (e.g., assuming a lack of motivation
on the basis of no actions for longer period of time
while the learner just has gone to the toilette) are
a significant harm to motivation, engagement, and the
game flow. The conditions under which a certain adaptive
intervention is given are to be developed on the basis
of psycho-pedagogical rules.
The rules for triggering educational interventions and
problem solving interventions, for instance, are defined
based on cognitive psychological considerations in tight
relation to the continuous assessment of skills in terms
of CbKST. Through the definition of threshold values
on skill probabilities an according intervention is
prompted if the non-invasive monitoring procedures of
the learner’s actions provide substantial evidence
for lacking skills or an increasing distance to the
problem solution. Rules for motivational interventions,
on the other hand, are developed grounding on motivational
psychology, referring e.g. to attribution theory and
the ARCS model of motivational design. Correspondingly,
continuously unsuccessful behaviour and unconfident
reactions arguing for a decrease or lack of confidence
and motivation will trigger an intervention fostering
motivation and suggesting self-worth enhancing attribution
styles.
Interactive and
Adaptive Storytelling
The major achievements
during the project are situated in the fields of theoretical
backgrounds of digital storytelling in adaptive educational
games, implementation of methods elaborated as part
of the research and the creation of an authoring tool
for adaptive educational games. |
As a theoretical result, a framework for higher level
adaptation was described, integrating the ideas of
adaptive digital storytelling with the CbKST-based
educational adaptation mechanisms (micro and macro-adaptation).
Closely related yet more focused on the area of
storytelling are the results achieved in the context
of “Theoretical storytelling framework”.
Here, research efforts into foundations of digital
storytelling and the creation of a format for the
description and execution of digital stories were
concentrated. One of the results of this work was
the recommendation to use the “Hero’s
Journey” story model as an established and formalized
pattern for narrative which nevertheless was adaptable
for use in educational games. This choice highlights
the connection of this task with didactic and game
design tasks in the project, as choices in one area
influenced the other areas.
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For encoding educational
game narratives, the format ICML, created as a result
of previous projects, was extended to be used as the
basic format of the 80Days game framework. One major
extension was the introduction of the concept of Narrative
Game-Based Learning Objects (NGLOB). This refers to
story or game parts which are annotated with information
about their narrative function as well as information
about their suitability for certain players as identified
by their player type and information about the objects’
learning function, indicating which skills are required
for a certain part of the game and which are taught
to the player during this part of the game. This general
and reusable set of metadata can be used to annotate
game objects in various contexts and across different
games and genres.
Based on the theoretical
results achieved, the proposed methods were implemented
into the “Narration Engine” component. This
software component, being used in the 80Days technical
framework and therefore the demonstrator game, is able
to parse ICML files with the NGLOB-based annotations
and to execute the game based on the user. In order
to react and adapt to different users, the Narration
Engine is synchronized with the Adaptive Learning Engine.
The Narration Engine offers a balance of control between
the player and the author, which is a common challenge
in digital storytelling (referred to as the “narrative
paradox”). This is achieved by setting up parts
of the game in such a way that the author’s vision
of the story is enforced while other parts can be freely
navigated by the player. In this case, the game is controlled
based on the parameters for adaptivity the author has
set up during the authoring phase of the game’s
story. For actually executing the story, the Narration
Engine is also integrated with the Game Engine displaying
the game to the player and accepting inputs.
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In order to properly demonstrate the effects of the
80Days adaptive framework and the Narration Engine,
a second line of demonstrators under the name of “Bat
Cave” was created mainly by TUD. This demonstrator
did not feature a 3D game engine as the other demonstrator
games, but only a relatively simple 2D environment.
However the other components of the 80Days framework
such as the adaptive learning engine are included
in Bat Cave, which can therefore be used to evaluate
the approach of 80Days in a more controlled and transparent
environment. Using Bat Cave, various information usually
hidden from the player by design can be visualized,
allowing the tool to be used for evaluation as well
as rapid prototyping due to being able to check the
effects of setting various parameters on the adaptive
algorithms included in the adaptive framework.
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The visual editing component
for the game’s story was developed during the
project as a tool for allowing authors to create the
story for an adaptive digital educational game without
the need to edit individual files or write statements
in a programming language. Connected to the change of
partners from ZGDV to TUD, it was decided to complement
the Story Editor with a complete authoring tool, which
allows the creation of entire games by non-programmers.
This tool, called “StoryTec”,
includes the Story Editor as originally envisioned as
one component. Using StoryTec,
an author can create and organize the structure of the
game’s narrative, integrate content such as images
or videos, set up interactive behaviour (for example
directing a game character to deliver a certain line
of dialogue when an action in the game was carried out)
and configure parameters for adaptivity by means of
the NGLOB data described above.
Macro
and Micro Adaptive Technology
80Days has successfully
produced an Adaptive Engine that is conceptually abstracted
and technically separate from the Story and Game Engines.
It successfully implements the skill assessment and
motivation assessment logic necessary to infer the learner’s
current state. This model is used to adapt, in runtime,
the game and story to enhance the educational effectiveness
of the game. The Adaptive Engine represents a number
of significant advances over the engine developed in
ELEKTRA.
Namely, the 80Days Adaptive Engine –
>>> successfully implements motivational adaptations.
These adaptations stem from the MAE (Motivation Assessment
Engine) and the corresponding rules for motivation interventions.
>>> is truly scalable. There were concerns
about the scalability of the CbKST approach and through
intelligent encoding, partitioning and reduction in
the knowledge space the Adaptive Engine can now scale
successfully across a large number of learning situations.
In ELEKTRA
this was limited to less than five LeS.
>>> can integrate successfully in a micro and
macro adaptation workflow. It can cooperate with the
Story Engine to ensure the storyline can grow successfully
to accommodate additional learning objectives.
Learning
Resource Integration
In an initial phase of
the project the focus has been put on the identification
and description of resources to be used in the generation
of terrain. In particular several different terrain
elevation datasets as well as satellite images have
been downloaded and evaluated with the purpose of creating
a terrain model. One of the first objectives of modern
geography teaching programs is to provide a geographic
framework to the pupils allowing the spatial localisation
of the different geographic phenomena and aspects constituting
the main topic of the geography class. In 80Days we
tried to create this framework by setting the action
of the game in a terrain representing western and central
Europe (in this case this is the framework). From this
point of view, the geographic datasets selected and
utilized in the first demonstrator constitute not only
a resource from a ‘technical’ side, but
also an important learning content. Furthermore the
work of selection and description of learning resources
led to the definition of a clearly arranged repository
structure. Resources have been classified and stored
due to their content following a directories structure
consisting of three main categories (Basic Material,
Topographic and Thematic Resources, Additional Resources)
each of them composed by several sub-categories. At
the same time for each identified resources a metadata
sheet has been compiled. These sheets collect information
about dataset format, provider institution, coverage,
resolution, IPR, etc. Beside the identification of specific
geographic datasets necessary for the rendering of the
3D environment, attention has been also put on additional
resources such as 3D objects, videos, maps or pictures.
Through the investigation of the availability of copyright
free 3D objects has been possible to increase the visual
appealing of the 3D environment by placing them on the
generated terrain surface. By identifying utilizable
topographic and thematic maps it has been possible to
reduce the work necessary for the production of navigation
elements thanks to the utilization of already existing
and suitable material (maps). Videos and pictures have
been identified used for the illustration and completion
of certain learning situation avoiding the manual creation
of specific images or animated sequences.
Another task focused initially on the integration of
the different datasets identified and selected through
and on their utilization for the generation of an immersive
game environment using computer game technology. On
the one side the main integration and harmonisation
problems have been identified and described. On the
other side investigation has been carried out in order
to allow the development of tools for the management
of the selected data.. Projecter has been specifically
implemented in order to allow the conversion from geographic
datasets from typical GIS formats into something utilizable
by the game engines in the process of terrain generation.
In particular harmonisation in terms of coordinate systems
and spatial resolution is carried out. At the same possible
the analysis of the functionalities of GIS software
allowed the definition of concrete steps leading to
the integration of data in both raster and vector format
in the same final result. It has been also possible
to demonstrate the possibility to use the same approach
for rendering other regions at different spatial resolution
without having to invest particular work on the adaptation.
Further on research work and tests have been carried
out in order to implement the utilization of 3D objects
in the rendered environment. An approach allowing a
semi-automatic placement of 3D object according to rules
based on the information contained in land cover geographic
datasets has been developed. Placement of objects corresponding
to defined coordinate pairs is of course also possible.
The combination of the results of the various tasks
resulted in the development of the final resource integration
methodology. The methodology is built on the utilization
of freely available digital resource for the reduction
of DEG’s development costs. On the one side freely
utilizable geographic datasets can be used, combined
and integrated into a computer game engine in order
to generate a 3D navigable virtual environment. On the
other side the methodology describes the principle allowing
the selection and further utilization of additional
external material such as videos, pictures or map in
form of assets. The final resource integration methodology
presents step by step the operations necessary in order
to achieve the mentioned results. Thanks to principles
of the resource selection process, description of GIS
harmonisation functions and explanation of the tools
specifically developed for supporting the framework
also an external researcher not involved in 80Days should
be able to re-use the developed approach. Beside the
definition and detailed description of the single steps
necessary for the re-utilization of the resource integration
approach developed in 80Days, ETHZ invested particular
efforts in the development of Terrain Viewer, a software
allowing the generation of virtual environments based
on geographic datasets. This program allow the generation
of 3D virtual environments outside of this specific
DEG context. Terrain Viewer is a stand-alone program
utilizable independently from the 80Days DEG context
(Lizard, Atlexicon, BatCave). This will on the one side
allow computer game experts to easily generate virtual
environments and game assets. On the other side the
methodology offers researcher in the field of cartography
and geovisualization to experiment a potentially interesting
new technology for the appealing representation of geographic
information.
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Game Design and Didactic
Design
In the course of the project two strands of demonstrators
evolved: “Lizard” and “Bat Cave”.
Three versions of Lizard were designed and developed.
Based on the user validation results of the respective
forerunner version the demonstrators improved iteratively
their learning game design and the research concept
of Micro adaptivity and story pacing in particular.
The demonstrator “Bat Cave” was designed
as a mock-up system with a massive but simple content
pool in order to test the macro adaptive technology
and enable the realization of several learning and
story paths.
The design team produced three Learning Game Design
Documents for “Lizard”. The achievements
in the Learning Game Design for Lizard was improved
by user validation tests in classrooms, interviews
with focus groups, participatory design sessions at
the 3rd YOUTH FORUM 2008 and the GAMESCOM 2009 in
Cologne. The principles of good learning game design
of the forerunner project ELEKTRA
were developed further: On the one hand we developed
new didactic design and game design (game metaphor,
game concept) that suited to the learner requirements
and objectives of Geography, on the other hand we
gained more abstract design experience on a methodological
level because the subject was different compared to
physics in ELEKTRA.
This was important in order to understand which design
methods are valid for at least two very disparate
subjects like Physics and Geography and which design
elements are subject to the specific requirements
of the subject didactics.
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Game Development
We have developed and enhanced main
software modules constituting the 80Days Game Engine:
scripting engine, physics engine, sound system, GUI
system and input/output modules. Great attention has
been put to the relationship with other 80Days main
software modules, namely Story Engine, Story Editor
and Learning Engine.
TCD, responsible for the development of Learning Engine,
TUD, responsible for the development of Story Engine
and Story Editor and TL responsible for the development
of Game Engine, have worked together to define and
implement the communication modules between the three
engines, fundamental technological step toward the
creation of the base technology of 80Days.
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In particular the fundamental
functioning of the LE (in accordance with the four-stage
ALIGN approach) remains the same, but discrete alterations
have been made to accommodate adaptive storytelling.
Specifically, this involved enhancing and refining the
communications protocol to include the SE, the inclusion
of a story state database and story context filter and
the support of a broader range of adaptation types.
The adaptation rules (micro) necessary for the micro
missions have also been implemented as well as the automatic
extraction of ontology partitions from a global ontology.
On the basis of the underlying
technological foundations, game development of the demonstrator
strands Lizard and
Bat Cave required:
• to implement design requirements
• to integrate a Text to Speech technology in
80Days Game Engine
• to implement the Terraforming simulation
• improve integration of Game Engine, Learning
Engine and Story Engine
• to allow parts of the demonstrator being managed
by different engines but keeping real time performances
• to improve terrain rendering algorithm for displaying
3D objects and enhancing visual quality of the rendered
terrain
• to improve characters behaviour and animations
• to integrate the character engine with the Text
to Speech technology
• to integrate 3D and 2D graphics, sound effects
and background music
• to integrate additional external learning resources
• to enable players having a satisfactory learning/gaming
experience
Evaluation
T he evaluation studies undertaken in the three phases
of the project have been very successful in terms of
improving the game prototype (one of the primary goals
of the evaluation studies), gaining insights into the
factors contributing to the success of adaptive DEGs,
and identifying potential research topics to be pursued
in the future. Specifically, the close collaborations
between the design team, the development team and the
evaluation team have resulted in some significant improvements
of the game prototype. Amongst others, the increasing
stability of the prototype from Lizard 1.0 to Lizard
3.0 is notable. So is its usability. In particular,
specific research topics on game-based learning include
the role of gender, evaluation of adaptivity, tracking
of user experience over time, co-experience in social
gameplay, theoretical frameworks for understanding gaming
interactions (Law & Sun, under review), are worthy
of further research efforts.
Another significant progress
we have achieved is the use of eye-tracking technique
to study visual attention during gameplay. The enthusiasm
over this topic has led to an interesting experimental
study conducted under the collaboration between ULEIC
and UniGraz. Results are published in various quality
papers. Indeed, the
recent rapid development of eye-tracking devices has
rendered their deployment much easier and user-friendly
(e.g. little effort for calibration and large degree
of head movement). More important is that the technique
has become non-intrusive and much more accurate. Nonetheless,
interpretations of visual data such as fixation duration,
fixation count and scanpath remain malleable. This issue
has been experienced in the evaluation of Lizard 3.0
where eye-tracker was used in some testing sessions.
The related findings stimulate us to further investigate
it.
The project conducted
also two follow-up evaluation studies of the StoryTec
authoring tool, which included preparing a questionnaire
and test setting as well as carrying out the tests.
The first evaluation study was carried out with 26 subjects
who tested authoring of a small game in StoryTec
using the Think-Aloud method, resulting in useful protocols,
and who afterwards filled out a questionnaire. The second
evaluation study was carried out with three employees
of a German educational game studio, who intensely tested
StoryTec and gave
feedback on how they could envision StoryTec
in their work.
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