Personalized storytelling for educational computer games

Abstract

Educational computer games are a highly popular but also a highly challenging field where (technology-enhanced) education meets entertainment/ gaming. Ongoing endeavors concentrate on the need to translate the state-of-the-art in conventional e-learning, this regards in particular to technologies of intelligent and adaptive tutoring, to educational games. This is a non-trivial attempt since methods of personalization, such as pedagogical guidance or adaptive curriculum sequencing have a substantial impact on a game's flow, in particular on the narrative. In the present paper we introduce a formal and computable approach to interactive and adaptive storytelling in educational games. This approach, coined macro adaptivity, is based on the idea of merging story models with cognitive domain and learner models. The principles of the approach have been exemplified in an appealing educational game teaching geography for 12 to 14 year olds. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.