Adaptive Educational Games: Providing Non-invasive Personalised Learning Experiences

Abstract

Educational games have the potential to provide intrinsically motivating learning experiences that immerse and engage the learner. However, the much heralded benefits of educational games seldom consider the one-size-fits-all approach to education they typically embody. The benefit provided by adaptive educational games is that of a motivating environment reinforced with a personalized learning experience. However, adapting a game to enhance its educational benefit endangers its intrinsic motivation and flow. This paper proposes a novel approach for non-invasively adapting a game to enable a personalized learning experience. This is achieved using an innovative, generic and reusable architecture, without mitigating the motivational features of gaming. An implementation of this approach in the form of the ALIGN (Adaptive Learning In Games through Noninvasion) system is detailed and the results of an authentic evaluation are discussed.