Applying Intelligent and Immersive Game-based Learning in Distance Education Dr Oscar Lin 01/21/2010 Athabasca University, Edmonton

Immersive Learning Environments Commercial platforms such as: World of Warcraft for online gaming Second Life for online social networking and e-commerce Positive outcomes of these environments a high level of realism associated levels of engagement supporting and encouraging social interaction Whether these positive outcomes can be generalized and applied to the education community and weather institution can adopt these environments and provide them as part of their online ICT infrastructure ?

Game-based E-Learning the use of a computer games based approach to deliver, support, and enhance teaching, learning, assessment, and evaluation. (Connolly et al., 2004)

Sun’s Project Wonderland Collaboration environment using 3D graphics and immersive audio Create 3D virtual worlds Open platform based on Java Technology 6/8/20164Athabasca University

Project Wonderland Toolkit The toolkit also provides support for adding items such as Whiteboards PDF viewers Video players Avatars other components useful for educational applications.

jMonkeyEngine (JME) provides the provides the low-level infrastructure needed to build 3D graphics systems and games. provides functionality for rendering, collision detection, and other code functionalities required to create a virtual world. provides all the necessary tools to construct an educational game However, the JME game engine is all but inaccessible to most educators. It is a Java Game Engine, not a Game Creator !

The Wonderland toolkit builds upon the JME infrastructure adding features that enable the content developer to more easily add virtual world elements such as buildings, furniture, scenery, and other elements needed to provide an immersive 3D experience. e.g., educators will benefit greatly from Wonderland’s ability to import graphics elements from Google’s 3D Warehouse, which contains thousands of 3D elements in a wide range of categories, and are available free of charge.

Only a partial solution still too complex for most educators to implement their own learning games. avatar animation and facial expressions, but these features must be controlled manually – there is no way to associate them with game events. stops short of providing tools essential to many educational game activities, such as question banks, score keeping, and user modeling.

Challenges in Widespread Adoption The time and expertise required to create meaningful learning activities based on virtual-world technologies remains a significant barrier.

The Research Goal To define a framework for educational game development, based on Sun’s Wonderland Toolkit and the JADE multi-agent platform. To demonstrate an effective means of combining a multi- agent system with Sun’s Wonderland toolkit in order to provide a more complete set of functionalities needed to produce 3D virtual-world educational games.

Communication Knowledge Simulating Human communicative strategies Compose explanations spoken or textual Deliver encouragement or critiques Maintain a mixed initiative dialogue Analyze a student explanation, spoken or textual Question students’ approach Recognize student’s affect (emotion), focus of attention, or motivation Engage students in role playing; hire partners for training interactive skills … (Woolf, 2009)

Why Software Agents ? Agents will be used as a means of providing basic game functionality such as scorekeeping, question and answer interactions, controlling overall game behaviour, and automating various tasks related to game-play. Agents will also be used to support emotional expression in the interactions with Wonderland game characters to provide pedagogical functions such as the ability of a game element to provide appropriate feedback.

1. Multi-agent Game Control Module Common game element Scorekeeping Turn taking Application of rules Advanced game elements Emotional modeling Adaptive behavior

Why Agent-based Game Control? Principle of agent autonomy: Because of the potential complexity of the environment, it is not practical to analyse and code for every possible game state and every possible interaction between the various game elements. The controlling agents be capable of acting autonomously, making their own decisions to resolve the apparent conflict and to act in their own interests and the best interests of the game.

2. Agent/Wonderland Messaging System (Grant McClure) MAS events perceptsactions Inputs/actions events Customized client

3. Believable Game Elements Proposed Emotion Model (Anuja Bajaj) Animated Pedagogical Agents: They should be able to convey expression They should respond appropriately to human interaction They should be able to perceive emotion Should provide guidance or impart knowledge Our goal is not to accurately model user emotions, but to provide a sufficiently complex emotional model for game characters (including the human game player), so that these elements can display appropriate emotions and behave accordingly, within the context of the game.

4. User Modeling (Behzad Karim, Athabasca University) Emotional state model Game data such as the user’s score, score relative to other players Profiles

5. User Interaction For prototype, text-based chat like conversations National language interactions FreeTTS speech synthesis software Sphinx4 speech recognition software Keyword detection

6. Game Character Behavior What types of agent architecture are most suitable to implement intelligent behavior in games? Learner Agents Pedagogical Agents NPCs (e.g. virtual co-learners) Other System agents (e.g., yellow page, launching, killing agents

7. Pedagogical Design Principles (Anuja Bajaj, University of Waterloo) Providing a challenging and complex real-world environment within which to apply their theoretical knowledge. Difficulties in dealing with ambiguity and vagueness Developing and applying transferable analytical and problem-solving skills. Developing self confidence and increased motivation. Allowing students time to reflect upon their practice and develop metacognitive strategies capable of adapting to new and evolving situations.

A Case Study (Mark Dutchuk, Vancouver Island University)) Through the implementation of a working prototype --- QuizMASter, we hope to prove that our approach can bring essential educational components to Wonderland 3D virtual environments, to produce effective and engaging educational game content. We will test and verify our solution though a series of scenario-based functional tests Although our project will be based on a specific case- study, we intend to explore solutions that may be applied generally – rather than to a specific implementation.

TV Game Show: QuizMASter a small group of contestants compete by answering questions presented by the game show host. Contestants score points by correctly answering questions before their opponents do. EduTainment Athabasca University

The Architectural Design EduTainment Athabasca University Player Agent Host Agent Banter Session Bonding Scoring Subsystem

2D-QuizMASter help students learn their course material through friendly competition Use Pedagogical Agents to provide feedback & motivation assess learners’ emotional states through examining learner’s standing, response timing, and history, and banter; provide appropriate feedback to students to motivate them EduTainment Athabasca University

2D-QuizMASter Questions are drawn from a learning management system database and presented to player’s one question at a time. The answer given, the length of time taken to respond are transmitted back to a central agent. Scores will be tallied, and the feedback on a player’s standing will be provided to motivate the player.

Future Research Build some support tools to facilitate the modeling and implementation of learning activities with agents, making use of the architecture proposed. Learning strategies or learning styles in such 3D virtual learning environments Successful factors to promote Immersive Education Large-scale Multiuser virtual worlds