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Personalization of Educational Video Games in APOGEE
Abstract
Gamification of education is a fact in recent years. This method for imperceptible learning is used in many countries and schools all over the world. The advantages and disadvantages of the educational games according, to students and teachers, are shortly explained here. The paper describes an intelligent video maze-game that is a container for various mini-games that bring the essential educational content and challenges for learners. It also presents a model of a student (as a learner and as a player) and the framework for providing a personalized learning experience in the context of an educational game. Thus, the presented maze game can fit different learning and playing styles of a particular user. The process of personalization is in line with the preliminary results from an online survey exploring students’ views about educational video games. The findings reveal their preferences about many issues such as types of mini-games, embraced learning content, and the willingness to repeat the game with the same or increased complexity to improve the overall results or acquired knowledge.
... As a whole, there are different connotations for personalization and adaptation in the learning context, which can vary significantly depending on the context, pedagogy approach, technology resources and other factors (Prensky, 2001;Peirce et al., 2008). According to some research in Terzieva et al. (2020), personalized learning is an umbrella term for tailored educational approaches. They pay attention to characteristics of the individual student (abilities, knowledge, learning styles, as well as needs, motivations and goals) to provide high-quality formative assessment and well-paced engaging lessons while supporting students even beyond classrooms. ...
... APOGEE video game personalization framework based on(Terzieva et al., 2020) ITSE 18,1 ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present principles for personalization of both learning content and gameplay in serious games for learning, which are based on a combined model of the student that comprises user, learner and player-related aspects of the student’s profile. Each of the considered user, learner and player sub-models has a static and dynamic group of characteristics. These characteristics assist general approaches for learning mazes game personalization applied to embedded mini-games (designed as information units, learning objects and educational tasks) so that to be adjustable and to enable learners to acquire knowledge more effectively.
Design/methodology/approach
A student modelling approach was applied to design the personalization of learning content in the educational maze game and each of them contained mini-games. To evaluate the student’s preferences about the types of mini-games and ways of their personalization depending on individual and group student characteristics, the authors conducted an online survey.
Findings
This study presents examples of personalization of four types of mini-games available in maze halls, namely, question, searching, arranging and action games. Next, the research discusses findings from an online survey aiming at the evaluation of the preferred types of mini-games and the way of their personalization. There are analysed results concerning the impact of the student model characteristics on the preferred ways of personalization in educational maze games, together with criteria for personalization of educational resources according to student’s level of knowledge, age, goals and learning style.
Research limitations/implications
A significant limitation of the research is the relatively small number of survey participants and the lack of studying the impact of learning and playing styles over game personalization. Another limitation of the study is the inclusion of only some of the mini-games within the demonstration maze, which respondents play before answering the survey questions.
Originality/value
This paper presents original research on the personalization of educational maze game based on a model of the student profile that comprises both static and dynamic properties reflecting user, learner and player-related aspects of the student character, together with results obtained from an online survey.
... Game-Based Learning (GBL) é um termo utilizado para jogos projetados especificamente para facilitar a aprendizagem, onde o jogador adquire conhecimentos por meio da interação com o jogo [Hamari apud Chen, 2024], e gamificação é o uso de elementos de jogos em atividades não relacionadas a jogos, visando promover o engajamento e a aprendizagem. Embora o conceito tenha ganhado força em 2010, práticas semelhantes já eram utilizadas na educação [Marcandali, 2020;Kapp, 2018;Terzieva, 2020apud Hernández-Romero, 2023Deterding, 2011], esses jogos não apenas ajudam no aprendizado, mas também na criação de um ambiente seguro e motivador, onde os erros são vistos como oportunidades de aprendizado. A aplicação de IA nos jogos educativos permite personalizar o ensino, adaptando-se ao progresso do aluno e fornecendo feedback contínuo. ...
Com o avanço da Tecnologia da Informação, muitas ferramentas estão sendo desenvolvidas, principalmente no âmbito da educação. A Inteligência Artificial (IA) é uma delas. Este estudo tem o objetivo de analisar as contribuições do uso de jogos alimentados pela IA, como ferramenta na personalização e engajamento da aprendizagem, na educação básica, por meio de uma Revisão Sistemática de Literatura. Os estudos mostraram que há uma melhora significativa na aprendizagem e no engajamento dos alunos com a utilização da IA em jogos. O custo para o design de um jogo com IA e o preconceito quanto a utilização de jogos no ambiente escolar são desafios a serem enfrentados.
... In an educational context, gamification is used in different applications to facilitate the teaching process, with the purpose that students generate the commitment to acquire knowledge while playing and take advantage of various benefits such as ease of learning, constant practice of a topic, an initiative to seek additional information, increased interest in the subject and memorization of diverse topics for longer [5]. Otherwise, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms has revolutionized the generation of solutions in the educational field, thanks to its ability to predict, classify and process substantial amounts of data. ...
Traditional education has been based for many years on monotonous teaching techniques and practices to assess students' skills and knowledge in the classroom, which interferes with the evolution and adaptation of education using recent technologies. To create new learning methods using intelligent and digital tools, this paper presents an architecture that uses gamification and natural language processing techniques as an alternative to propose new learning and feedback methods for high school students. The main objective is to motivate students to obtain new knowledge or study what they have already learned in the classroom while playing video games, and for teachers to obtain relevant data on the learning level of each student. As a result of the proposed architecture, a platform video game for mobile devices has been developed, which performs quizzes on specific topics of biology to high school level education. Users give answers through voice commands, which are processed with the VOSK library, and then compared with other options using the cosine similarity method. Finally, an algorithm leverages the scores acquired from video game actions on scenes and questionnaires to synergistically derive a comprehensive metric that assesses the user's proficiency in learning. This methodology was validated according to several experiments, and in future work, it will be applied to control and test groups of students to validate the level of learning obtained using the proposed platform.
... The developed model of a student comprises three main aspects: user, learner, and player, where each aspect is presented with both static and dynamic parameters ( Figure 2). A detailed explanation of this model is given in [29,55]. ...
Personalized learning has gained in popularity over the past decade. It provides learners with learning resources that comply with their characteristics and preferences or offers them tasks and quizzes adapted to their performance. This research presents how we apply this concept to an educational video maze game created and generated on the APOGEE platform. In particular, this article explores the following three research questions: (1) Which characteristics in the student’s model should be considered for the personalization of educational video games? (2) What are the student’s preferences regarding the personalization of educational video games? (3) How should the process of personalization of educational video games be organized? The answers to these questions are found by conducting practical experiments concerning user experience with the educational maze video game. The article also describes the model of students comprising user’s, learner’s, and player’s aspects with both static and dynamic features. Further, the personalization process of educational games based on this model is described. The results showing the student’s preferences are presented and critically examined. The provided discussion involves the disparities in the preferences of different groups of students concerning the amounts of play of learning games, preferred mini-games, and parameters to which educational materials should be tailored.
... The APOGEE (smArt adaPtive videO GamEs for Education) [8] is a platform for the construction and generation of educational video maze games. The platform provides an automatic generation of educational video maze games (based on formal maze game descriptions as XML documents [9]), personalization capabilities and personalized content [10], and adaptive gameplay. ...
Game-based learning and serious games are popular topics among researchers and practitioners, resulting in multiple studies, demonstrating the various benefits to the users. The paper is based on the application of the TIMED-VGE taxonomy (or Taxonomy of Instruments for Management and Evaluation of the Design of Video Games for Education) in the APOGEE (smArt adaPtive videO GamEs for Education) software platform. The platform provides an automatic generation of educational video maze games (based on formal maze game descriptions as XML documents), personalization capabilities and personalized content, and adaptive gameplay. According to the application of the TIMED-VGE taxonomy in the APOGEE platform, the software tools are divided into two main categories (Assistive instruments and Analytics Instruments), which represent the whole set of tools facilitating the processes of the design and creation of educational video games in the APOGEE platform. The taxonomy represents the hierarchical structure of the software tools and in each category, there is a certain set of tools. The focus of this paper is on the development of a functional model of the instrument Maze Game Designer, based on the application of the TIMED-VGE taxonomy. The Maze Game Designer is in the category "Design management" instruments, according to the taxonomy. The tool is key to starting the process of designing and creating educational games in the APOGEЕ platform. Therefore, the paper presents further development of the Maze Game Designer instrument and its functionalities, based on the core user functionalities of the tool, analyzed and developed in previous publications of the author. As a result, the paper presents an extended version of the user functionalities of the Maze Game Designer instrument, based on the application of the TIMED-VGE taxonomy in the APOGEE software platform. Based on these functionalities, the paper presents the developed two functional models of the tool and the main workflow of the Maze Game Designer instrument. This includes a Functional model of the tool and a Detailed functional model of the Edit Maze Game use case of the Maze Game Designer instrument. All these results will serve for the future development of the tool. The development of a key instrument of the APOGEE software platform, according to the application of the TIMED-VGE taxonomy, will contribute to increasing the designer's capabilities to use the platform's instruments for the design and creation of improved video games for education.
The paper focuses on educational video games and the users who play and learn through these games. More specifically, on the ability to visually analyze the results achieved by users of educational maze video games created using the APOGEE platform. This paper presents a user-oriented process analysis of using the software tool DIZU-EVG (Data visualIZation instrUment for Educational Video Games) focusing on analyzing the behavior of the players and learners. The paper furthers the development of the DIZU-EVG instrument designed by the author. The paper presents an overview context model of the DIZU-EVG instrument in the platform, explaining the primary communication and data exchange between the DIZU-EVG tool and the primary systems external to the instrument within the APOGEE platform. The creation and integration of the DIZU-EVG instrument into the APOGEE platform will enrich it with a new, original, and valuable tool that is not available on the platform. This tool will enable users to view their results, thanks to specialized dashboards personalized for each unique user, depending on their profile on the platform. The possibility of visual analysis of the results achieved by players and learners in a personalized way, according to the user’s profile, will contribute to the overall understanding of the results achieved and an incentive to improve these results. Thus, users will be able to independently take timely individual actions to correct their failures in the game and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their perception of the educational material integrated into the educational video game.KeywordsEducational video gamesData visualizationSerious gamesGame-based learningUser-oriented analysisDIZU-EVG instrument
Games as entertainment, leisure, recreational, serious or otherwise where game-based designs of use such as gamification are discussed alongside access and inclusion for all to be able to enjoy and play and have fun. In-built to games are mechanics and motivational factors that are both intrinsic and extrinsic. Such factors can be influential to impact human emotions in playing a game and reaching a state of ‘Flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) where immersion is total. Potentials of game-based intervention across industries is being explored with good effect as is evident in this contribution.
Computer games are used more and more often in education. Their application in the learning process brings a lot of benefits and advantages compared to the classic form of teaching without the use of new technologies. Some of the more sophisticated games can include a variety of smaller ones, which supplement their functionality. In this article are described in detail the mini-games, which will be part of a 3D educational labyrinth game. They include: quiz, 2D puzzle, solving a Wordsearch Puzzle, rolling balls, shooting on moving inanimate objects, etc. The characteristics of mini-games are considered, and they may be mandatory or optional. The opinions of students and teachers regarding their preferences for the mini-games and the results are studied and compared. Surprisingly, according to the survey, teachers show a more positive attitude towards educational games than students. The APOGEE project aims to create a platform for automatically generating an educational 3D labyrinth game that can be easily used by teachers, even if they are not IT specialists. Thus, they will have the opportunity to choose the right mini-games and the necessary training material.
In recent years, researchers have reported positive outcomes and effects from applying computer games to the educational process. The preconditions for an effective game-based learning process include the presence of high learning interest and the desire to study hard. Therefore, educational video game design has to tailor gameplay to the style of the playing learner, i.e. to the psycho-cognitive abilities, attitudes, and skills of the individual player, in order to foster the player's motivation and creativity. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to draw a parallel between learning styles and styles of playing video games, and to investigate the correlations between these types of constructs. The article presents a new family of playing styles based on Kolb's experiential learning theory that is appropriate to be used for educational video games. This family is composed of four playing styles: Competitor, Dreamer, Logician, and Strategist, and corresponds to Honey and Mumford's learning styles based also on the theory of experiential learning, namely Activist, Reflector, Theorist, and Pragmatist. To measure the four playing styles, a 40-item questionnaire was designed. In order to verify the consistency, validity, and reliability of that questionnaire as an accurate tool for recognizing the four suggested player styles, a pilot study was conducted. The article reports the results obtained from the study, along with their analysis and applicability.
Playing style recognition is crucially important for style-based adaptation of digital games. Unlike traditional ways for measuring of styles by means of self-reports, automatic style estimation incorporated into a video game appears to be a more efficient and ecologically valid method. The article presents a model for in-game recognition of four playing styles (Competitor, Dreamer, Logician, and Strategist) based on the Kolb's experiential learning theory. The model applies multiple linear regression over task performance metrics as explanatory variables and coefficients found first by a heuristic approach relaying on experience and observation knowledge of domain experts and, next, estimated by the least squares method. Experiments with the model implemented within an affectively adaptive video game demonstrated the benefits of emotion-based dynamic difficulty adjustment over playing outcomes and proved its validity as an accurate instrument for automatic estimation of both the four playing styles and the learning styles of Honey and Mumford.
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International Educational performance measures, like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), rank countries based on their educational system's performance. However, these activities require years of work for thousands of people to collect, analyze and report the data. Furthermore, the results are always two years old when published and there are tens of missing countries. In this study, a global game-based analytics was introduced and evaluated in a real world environment. The paper continues the study reported in ECGBL 2013. Real-time game-based assessments do have several advantages compared to traditional measures, but they are not yet ready to replace PISA. For example, sample collection has to be radically improved in order to minimize noise and bring out only the valid cases.
This report, Personalising education: from research to policy and practice, brings together
a significant and comprehensive range of local and international research, particularly from
the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Four broad areas common to the concept of personalising education have emerged from a synthesis of this body of work. These are presented in the overview section of the report and comprise: student-centred learning, ICT as a key enabler, lifelong learning and communities of collaboration.
Following the overview of the research, the report then explores the emergence of personalisation from Australian and international perspectives. It includes current Victorian, national and international policy statements together with case studies that demonstrate how approaches to personalising education are being translated into practice.
This paper briefly presents a player satisfaction model called BrainHex, which was based on insights from neurobiological findings as well as the results from earlier demographic game design models (DGD1 and DGD2). The model presents seven different archetypes of players: Seeker, Survivor, Daredevil, Mastermind, Conqueror, Socialiser, and Achiever. We explain how each of these player archetypes relates to older player typologies (such as Myers-Briggs), and how each archetype characterizes a specific playing style. We conducted a survey among more than 50,000 players using the BrainHex model as a personality type motivator to gather and compare demographic data to the different BrainHex archetypes. We discuss some results from this survey with a focus on psychometric orientation of respondents, to establish relationships between personality types and BrainHex archetypes.
Do video games show demonstrable relationships to academic achievement gains when used to support the K-12 curriculum? In a review of literature, we identified 300+ articles whose descriptions related to video games and academic achievement. We found some evidence for the effects of video games on language learning, history, and physical education (specifically exergames), but little support for the academic value of video games in science and math. We summarize the trends for each subject area and supply recommendations for the nascent field of video games research. Many educationally interesting games exist, yet evidence for their impact on student achievement is slim. We recommend separating simulations from games and refocusing the question onto the situated nature of game-player-context interactions, including meta-game social collaborative elements.
Recent years have seen a rapid proliferation of mass-market consumer software that takes inspiration from video games. Usually summarized as "gamification", this trend connects to a sizeable body of existing concepts and research in human-computer interaction and game studies, such as serious games, pervasive games, alternate reality games, or playful design. However, it is not clear how "gamification" relates to these, whether it denotes a novel phenomenon, and how to define it. Thus, in this paper we investigate "gamification" and the historical origins of the term in relation to precursors and similar concepts. It is suggested that "gamified" applications provide insight into novel, gameful phenomena complementary to playful phenomena. Based on our research, we propose a definition of "gamification" as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts.
The research on formative assessment and feedback is reinterpreted to show how these processes can help students take control of their own learning, i.e. become self-regulated learners. This refor-mulation is used to identify seven principles of good feedback practice that support self-regulation. A key argument is that students are already assessing their own work and generating their own feedback, and that higher education should build on this ability. The research underpinning each feedback principle is presented, and some examples of easy-to-implement feedback strategies are briefly described. This shift in focus, whereby students are seen as having a proactive rather than a reactive role in generating and using feedback, has profound implications for the way in which teachers organise assessments and support learning.
Adaptive hypermedia is a new direction of research within the area of adaptive and user model-based interfaces. Adaptive hypermedia (AH) systems build a model of the individual user and apply it for adaptation to that user, for example, to adapt the content of a hypermedia page to the user's knowledge and goals, or to suggest the most relevant links to follow. AH systems are used now in several application areas where the hyperspace is reasonably large and where a hypermedia application is expected to be used by individuals with different goals, knowledge and backgrounds. This paper is a review of existing work on adaptive hypermedia. The paper is centered around a set of identified methods and techniques of AH. It introduces several dimensions of classification of AH systems, methods and techniques and describes the most important of them.
ABSTRACT Games for learning cannot take the same design approach as games,when,targeting,audiences. ,While,players,of entertainment games have the luxury of choosing games that suit them, students using digital games for learning typically have a single game for them to learn from, regardless of
Good computer and video games like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Pikmin, Rise of Nations, Neverwinter Nights, and Xenosaga: Episode 1 are learning machines. They get themselves learned and learned well, so that they get played long and hard by a great many people. This is how they and their designers survive and perpetuate themselves. If a game cannot be learned and even mastered at a certain level, it won't get played by enough people, and the company that makes it will go broke. Good learning in games is a capitalist-driven Darwinian process of selection of the fittest. Of course, game designers could have solved their learning problems by making games shorter and easier, by dumbing them down, so to speak. But most gamers don't want short and easy games. Thus, designers face and largely solve an intriguing educational dilemma, one also faced by schools and workplaces: how to get people, often young people, to learn and master something that is long and challenging--and enjoy it, to boot.
Personalized adaptive learning requires semantic-based and context-aware systems to manage the Web knowledge efficiently as well as to achieve semantic interoperability between heterogeneous information resources and services. The technological and conceptual differences can be bridged either by means of standards or via approaches based on the Semantic Web. This article deals with the issue of semantic interoperability of educational contents on the Web by considering the integration of learning standards, Semantic Web, and adaptive technologies to meet the requirements of learners. Discussion is m ade on the state of the art and the main challenges in this field, including metadata access and design issues relating to adaptive learning. Additionally, a way how to integrate several original approaches is proposed.
Video games have enormous mass appeal, reaching audiences in the hundreds of thousands to millions. They also embed many pedagogical practices known to be effective in other environments. This article reviews the sparse but encouraging data on learning outcomes for video games in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines, then reviews the infrastructural obstacles to wider adoption of this new medium.
This paper considers uses of technology in educational assessment from the perspective of innovation and support for teaching and learning. It examines assessment cases drawn from contexts that include large-scale testing programs as well as classroom-based programs, and attempts that have been made to harness the power of technology to provide rich, authentic tasks that elicit aspects of integrated knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving. These aspects of cognition are seldom well addressed by traditional testing programs using paper and pencil or computer technologies. The paper also gives consideration to strategies for developing balanced, multilevel assessment systems that involve articulating relationships among curriculum-embedded, benchmark, and summative assessments that operate across classroom, district, state, national, and international levels. It discusses the multiple roles for technology in an assessment-based information system in light of the decision support needed from the multiple actors who operate across levels of the education system. The paper concludes with a consideration of the current state of the field as well as the potential for technology to help launch a new era of integrated, learning-centered assessment systems.
In recent years, the learner models of some adaptive learning environments have been opened to the learners they represent. However, as yet there is no standard way of describing and analysing these 'open learner models'. This is, in part, due to the variety of issues that can be important or relevant in any particular learner model. The lack of a framework to discuss open learner models poses several difficulties: there is no systematic way to analyse and describe the open learner models of any one system; there is no systematic way to compare the features of open learner models in different systems; and the designers of each new adaptive learning system must repeatedly tread the same path of studying the many diverse uses and approaches of open learner modelling so that they might determine how to make use of open learner modelling in their system. We believe this is a serious barrier to the effective use of open learner models. This paper presents such a framework, and gives examples of its use to describe and compare adaptive educational systems.
In this article the authors focus on the use of a modal preferences questionnaire as a catalyst to empower students to reflect on their own sensory preferences and modify their study methods accordingly. The authors discuss the development and use of the questionnaire, strategies for students to use in modifying their learning behavior, responses of students and faculty to the technique, and directions for further investigation of modal preferences.
The advancement of mobile and wireless communication technologies has encouraged an increasing number of studies concerning mobile learning, in which students are able to learn via mobile devices without being limited by space and time; in particular, the students can be situated in a real-world scenario associated with the learning content. Although such an approach seems interesting to the students, researchers have emphasized the need for well-designed learning support in order to improve the students’ learning achievements. Therefore, it has become an important issue to develop methodologies or tools to assist the students to learn in a mobile learning environment. Based on this perspective, this study proposes a formative assessment-based approach for improving the learning achievements of students in a mobile learning environment. A mobile learning environment has been developed based on this approach, and an experiment on a local culture course has been conducted in southern Taiwan to evaluate its effectiveness. The experimental results show that the proposed approach not only promotes the students’ learning interest and attitude, but also improves their learning achievement.
Digital Game-Based Learning, by Marc Prensky, is a strategic and tactical guide to the newest trend in e-learning - combining content with video games and computer games to more successfully engage the under-40 "Games Generations," which now make up half of America's work force and all of its students. The book fully explores the concept of Digital Game-Based Learning, including such topics as How Learners Have Changed, Why Digital Game-Based Learning Is Effective, Simulations and Games, How Much It Costs, and How To Convince Management. With over 50 case studies and examples, it graphically illustrates how and why Digital Game-Based Learning is working for learners of all ages in all industries, functions and subjects.
survey, see Kobsa 1993 and McTear 1993). 2.1 Stereotypes A frequently employed user modeling method is the so-called "stereotype approach" (Rich 1979, Rich 1989). Stereotypes contain typical characteristics of user groups in the application domain of the system. Often they also contain socalled activation conditions which represent key characteristics that allow one to identify an individual as belonging to the respective user group. Stereotypes become applied to the current user if they are "manually" assigned, or if their activation conditions match available information about the user (automatic classification). As a consequence, all characteristics in the corresponding stereotypes are attributed to the user. Stereotypical assumptions about a user can be supplemented, or even overridden, if additional information pertaining to this individual user is available. The resulting collection of assumptions forms the individual user model, which should be taken into account when adapting
Teachers beliefs about game based learning: a comparative study of pedagogy, curriculum and practice in Italy, Turkey and the UK
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