Intelligent Authoring of Gamified Intelligent Tutoring Systems

ABSTRACT Intelligent Tutoring Systems can successfully complement and substitute other instructional models in many contexts. However, it is very common to students to become bored or disengaged using ITS. The inclusion of gamification capabilities (e.g., level, points and so on) in ITS design aims to engage students and to drive desired learning behaviors. Researchers have been noting that teachers are increasingly demanding to act as active users of systems with such features. In this context, the main challenge of this project is contributing to the actively participation (i.e., design) of teachers in the use of gamified intelligent tutoring systems. This challenge leads to the following research questions: (i) "how could we enable teachers to customize the construction of gamified ITS in a simple way and without requiring technical capabilities from them?"; and (ii) "how could we also provide good design principles in order to aid teachers in the customization of gamified ITS?". Thus, our aim is to develop an intelligent authoring platform to enable teachers for customizing gamified ITSs. In this way, we describe in this text a set of specific objectives that must be completed to achieve this general aim

Authoring gamified intelligent tutoring systems.

Sistemas Tutores Inteligentes (STIs) têm recibo a atenção de acadêmicos e profissionais desde da década de 70. Tem havido um grande número de estudos recentes em apoio da efetividade de STIs. Entretanto, é muito comum que estudantes fiquem desengajados ou entediados durante o processo de aprendizagem usando STIs. Para considerar explicitamente os aspectos motivacionais de estudantes, pesquisadores estão cada vez mais interessados em usar gamificação em conjunto com STIs. Contudo, apesar de prover tutoria individualizada para estudantes e algum tipo de suporte para professores, estes usuários não têm recebido alta prioridade no desenvolvimento destes tipos de sistemas. De forma a contribuir para o uso ativo e personalizado de STIs gamificados por professores, três problemas técnicos devem ser considerados. Primeiro, projetar STI é muito complexo (deve-se considerar diferentes teorias, componentes e partes interessadas) e incluir gamificação pode aumentar significativamente tal complexidade e variabilidade. Segundo, as funcionalidades de STIs gamificados podem ser usadas de acordo com vários elementos (ex.: nível educacional, domínio de conhecimento, teorias de gamificaçãoe STI, etc). Desta forma, é imprescindível tirar proveito das teorias e práticas de ambos os tópicos para reduzir o espaço de design destes sistemas. Terceiro, para efetivamente auxiliar professores a usarem ativamente estes sistemas, faz-se necessário prover uma solução simples e usável para eles. Para lidar com estes problemas, o principal objetivo desta tese é projetar uma solução computacional de autoria para fornecer aos professores uma forma de personalizar as funcionalidades de STIs gamificados gerenciando a alta variabilidade destes sistemas e considerando as teorias/práticas de gamificação e STI. Visando alcançar este objetivo, nós identificamos o espaço de variabilidade e o representamos por meio do uso de uma abordagem de modelagem de features baseada em ontologias (OntoSPL). Desenvolvemos um modelo ontológico integrado (Ontologia de tutoria gamificada ou Gamified tutoring ontology) que conecta elementos de design de jogos apoiados por evidências no domínio de e-learning, além de teorias e frameworks de gamificação aos conceitos de STI. Finalmente, desenvolvemos uma solução de autoria (chamada AGITS) que leva em consideração tais ontologias para auxiliar professores na personalização de funcionalidades de STIs gamificados. As contribuições deste trabalho são avaliadas por meio da condução de quatro estudos empíricos: (1) conduzimos um experimento controlado para comparar a OntoSPL com uma abordagem de modelagem de features bem conhecida na literatura. Os resultados sugerem que esta abordagem é mais flexível e requer menos tempo para mudar; (2) avaliamos o modelo ontológico integrado usando um método de avaliação de ontologias (FOCA) com especialistas tanto de contexto acadêmico quanto industrial. Os resultados sugerem que as ontologias estão atendendo adequadamente os papeis de representação do conhecimento; (3) avaliamos versões não-interativas da solução de autoria desenvolvida com 59 participantes. Os resultados indicam uma atitude favorável ao uso da solução de autoria projetada,nos quais os participantes concordaram que a solução é fácil de usar, usável, simples, esteticamente atraente,tem um suporte bem percebido e alta credibilidade; e (4) avaliamos, por fim,versões interativas (do zero e usando um modelo) da solução de autoria com 41 professores. Os resultados sugerem que professores podem usar e reusar, com um alto nível de aceitação, uma solução de autoria que inclui toda a complexidade de projetar STI gamificado.Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have been drawing the attention of academics and practitioners since early 70’s. There have been a number of recent studies in support of the effectiveness of ITSs. However, it is very common that students become disengaged or bored during the learning process by using ITSs. To explicitly consider students’ motivational aspects, researchers are increasingly interested in using gamification along with ITS.However, despite providing individualized tutoring to students and some kind of support for teachers, teachers have been not considered as first-class citizens in the development of these kinds of systems. In order to contribute to the active and customized use of gamified ITS by teachers, three technical problems should be considered. First, designing ITS is very complex (i.e., take into account different theories, components, and stahekolders) and including gamification may significantly increase such complexity and variability. Second, gamified ITS features can be used depending on several elements (e.g., educational level, knowledge domain, gamification and ITS theories, etc). Thus, it is imperative to take advantage of theories and practices from both topics to reduce the design space of these systems. Third, in order to effectively aid teachers to actively use such systems, it is needed to provide a simple and usable solution for them. To deal with these problems, the main objective of this thesis is to design an authoring computational solution to provide for teachers a way to customize gamified ITS features managing the high variability of these systems and considering gamification and ITS theories/practices. To achieve this objective, we identify the variability space and represent it using an ontology-based feature modeling approach (OntoSPL). We develop an integrated ontological model (Gamified tutoring ontology) that connects evidence-supported game design elements in the e-learning domain as well as gamification theories and frameworks to existing ITS concepts. Finally, we develop an authoring solution (named AGITS) that takes into account these ontologies to aid teachers in the customization of gamified ITS features. We evaluate our contributions by conducting four empirical studies: (1) we perform a controlled experiment to compare OntoSPL against a well-known ontology-based feature modeling approach. The results suggest that our approach is more flexible and requires less time to change; (2) we evaluate the ontological integrated model by using an ontology evaluation method (FOCA) with experts from academic and industrial settings. The results suggest that our ontologies are properly targeting the knowledge representation roles; (3) we evaluate non-interactive versions of the designed authoring solution with 59 participants. The results indicate a positive attitude towards the use of the designed authoring solutions, in which participants agreed that they are ease to use, usable, simple, aesthetically appealing, have a well-perceived system support and high credibility; and (4) we also evaluate interactive versions (scratch and template) of our authoring solution with 41 teachers. The results suggest that teachers can use and reuse, with a high acceptance level, an authoring solution that includes all the complexity to design gamified ITS

GaTO: An Ontological Model to Apply Gamification in Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are concerned with the use of artificial intelligence techniques for performing adaptive tutoring to learners' according to what they know about the domain. Researchers are increasingly interested in applying gamification in e-learning systems to engage students and to drive desired learning behaviors. However, little attention has been drawn to the effective application of gamification in ITS, and how to connect theories of both concepts in a standard and formal way. Moreover, gamified ITS should manipulate a huge amount of knowledge regarding several models, i.e., gamification, domain, student and pedagogical models. Formally connecting such theories as well as representing system's knowledge relies on the use of ontologies. In this paper, we present an ontological model that connects gamification and ITS concepts. Our model takes advantage of ontologies to allow automated reasoning (e.g., on the domain, student, pedagogical or gamification models), to enable interoperability, and create awareness about theories and good practices for the designers of gamified ITS. To evaluate our model, we use an ontology evaluation method based on five knowledge representation roles. We also illustrate how it could support the development of an intelligent authoring tool to design gamified ITS

Smart, social, flexible and fun: Escaping the flatlands of virtual learning environments

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This paper describes the development of intelligent, social, flexible and game-based pedagogic approaches and their applications in Virtual Learning Environment based Education. Applications of computer science technologies and techniques can enable, facilitate and change educational approaches, allowing scalable approaches that can address both individual student needs whilst managing large – sometimes-massive - cohort sizes. The benefits of these information systems include supporting the wide range of contexts met in education, in terms of individual needs and specific subject and curriculum requirements. Technologies and approaches that are considered range from the representation of knowledge and the use of intelligent systems, the use of social computing, through to the enabling opportunities of ubicomp and the practical application of game mechanics (gamification). This paper concludes with practical illustrations in the context of undergraduate computer science didactics

Learning-by-Teaching in CS Education: A Systematic Review

To investigate the strategies and approaches in teaching Computer Science (CS), we searched the literature review in CS education in the past ten years. The reviews show that learning-by-teaching with the use of technologies is helpful for improving student learning. To further investigate the strategies that are applied to learning-by-teaching, three categories are identified: peer tutoring, game-based flipped classroom, and teachable agents. In each category, we further searched and investigated prior studies. The results reveal the effectiveness and challenges of each strategy and provide insights for future studies

A flexible approach to introductory programming : engaging and motivating students

© 2019 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). In this paper, we consider an approach to supporting students of Computer Science as they embark upon their university studies. The transition to Computer Science can be challenging for students, and equally challenging for those teaching them. Issues that are unusual – if not unique – to teaching computing at this level include • the wide variety in students background, varying from no prior experience to extensive development practice; • the positives and negatives of dealing with self-taught hobbyists who may developed buggy mental models of the task in hand and are not aware of the problem; • the challenge of getting students to engage with material that includes extensive practical element; • the atypical profile of a computing cohort, with typically 80%+ male students. The variation in background includes the style of prior academic experience, with some students coming from traditional level 3 (i.e. A-levels), some through more vocational routes (e.g. B-Tech, though these have changed in recent years), through to those from experiential (work based) learning. Technical background varies from science, mathematical and computing experience, to no direct advanced technical or scientific experience. A further issue is students’ attainment and progression within higher education, where the success and outcomes in computer science has been identified as particularly problematic. Computer Science has one the worst records for retention (i.e. students leaving with no award, or a lower award than that originally applied for), and the second worst for attainment (i.e. achieving a good degree, that being defined as a first or a 2:1). One way to attempt to improve these outcomes is by identifying effective ways to improve student engagement. This can be through appropriate motivators – though then the balance of extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation becomes critical. In this paper, we consider how to utilize assessment – combining the formative and summative aspects - as a substitute for coarser approaches based on attendance monitoring

A flexible approach to introductory programming : engaging and motivating students

© 2019 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). In this paper, we consider an approach to supporting students of Computer Science as they embark upon their university studies. The transition to Computer Science can be challenging for students, and equally challenging for those teaching them. Issues that are unusual – if not unique – to teaching computing at this level include • the wide variety in students background, varying from no prior experience to extensive development practice; • the positives and negatives of dealing with self-taught hobbyists who may developed buggy mental models of the task in hand and are not aware of the problem; • the challenge of getting students to engage with material that includes extensive practical element; • the atypical profile of a computing cohort, with typically 80%+ male students. The variation in background includes the style of prior academic experience, with some students coming from traditional level 3 (i.e. A-levels), some through more vocational routes (e.g. B-Tech, though these have changed in recent years), through to those from experiential (work based) learning. Technical background varies from science, mathematical and computing experience, to no direct advanced technical or scientific experience. A further issue is students’ attainment and progression within higher education, where the success and outcomes in computer science has been identified as particularly problematic. Computer Science has one the worst records for retention (i.e. students leaving with no award, or a lower award than that originally applied for), and the second worst for attainment (i.e. achieving a good degree, that being defined as a first or a 2:1). One way to attempt to improve these outcomes is by identifying effective ways to improve student engagement. This can be through appropriate motivators – though then the balance of extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation becomes critical. In this paper, we consider how to utilize assessment – combining the formative and summative aspects - as a substitute for coarser approaches based on attendance monitoring

Does Tailoring Gamified Educational Systems Matter? The Impact on Students\u27 Flow Experience

Recent research has shown that using gamification can prone to impact negatively on the motivation of students in educational systems. One of the reasons is that people are motivated or demotivated by different gamification elements according to their gamer type . Thus, one of the main challenges in this field is to tailor gamified educational systems based on the students\u27 gamer type and investigate if this kind of system presents better results than the counter-tailored gamified educational systems. This paper aims to investigate the effects of a tailored gamified educational system based on gamer type in terms of students\u27 flow experience. We conducted an experiment with 121 Brazilian elementary school students comparing a tailored version against a counter-tailored version of a gamified educational system in terms of students\u27 flow experience. The main results indicate that there is no significant difference in terms of students\u27 flow experience, surprising and contradicting recent important studies in this field