Interactive pedagogical drama

TLDR

Interactive drama must preserve artistic standards while allowing substantial variability in story scenarios. The paper proposes an agent‑based framework that deconstructs scripted dialogue into emotion‑modeled agent elements to create interactive pedagogical drama. Characters act autonomously, guided by learner‑controlled intentions, while director and cinematographer agents manage action and presentation to maintain story structure, pedagogical goals, and dramatic effect. The framework is implemented in Carmen’s Bright IDEAS, an interactive health intervention that improves problem‑solving skills among mothers of pediatric cancer patients.

Abstract

This paper describes an agent-based approach to realizing interactive pedagogical drama. Characters choose their actions autonomously, while director and cinematographer agents manage the action and its presentation in order to maintain story structure, achieve pedagogical goals, and present the dynamic story to as to achieve the best dramatic effect. Artistic standards must be maintained while permitting substantial variability in story scenario. To achieve these objectives, scripted dialog is deconstructed into elements that are portrayed by agents with emotion models. Learners influence how the drama unfolds by controlling the intentions of one or more characters, who then behave in accordance with those intentions. Interactions between characters create opportunities to move the story in pedagogically useful directions, which the automated director exploits. This approach is realized in the multimedia title Carmen’s Bright IDEAS, an interactive health intervention designed to improve the problem solving skills of mothers of pediatric cancer patients.