Pedagogical based Learner Model Characteristics

International audienceThe personalisation and adaptation of content creation, distribution and presentation aim to increase learner quality of experience, improve the learning process and increase the learning outcomes. This paper introduces a novel Learner Model that is integrated by the NEWTON project into the NEWTELP learning platform in order to support personalisation and adaptation. The NEWTON's Learner Model includes a multitude of learner characteristics, including pedagogical, disability, affective and multi-sensorial

Energy-aware Adaptive Multimedia for Game-based e-learning

Thanks to their motivational potential, video games have started to be increasingly used for e-learning. However, as e-learning gradually shifts towards mobile learning, there is a growing need for innovative techniques to deliver rich learning material such as educational games to resource-constrained devices. In particular, the limited battery capacity of mobile devices stands out as a key issue that can significantly limit players' access to educational games. This paper proposes an Energy-aware Adaptive Multimedia Game-based E-learning (EAMGBL) framework that aims to enable energy-efficient educational games delivery to mobile devices over wireless networks. The framework builds on top of the idea to render the game on the server side and stream a recording of it to the player's device over the Internet. To reduce the mobile device energy consumption and enable the player to play for longer, the proposed framework proposes to adapt both the educational game elements as well as the game's recorded multimedia stream

User-centered EEG-based multimedia quality assessment

Multimedia users are becoming increasingly quality-aware as the technological advances make ubiquitous the creation and delivery of high-definition multimedia content. While much research work has been conducted on multimedia quality assessment, most of the existing solutions come with their own limitations, with particular solutions being more suitable to assess particular aspects related to user's Quality of Experience (QoE). In this context, there is an increasing need for innovative solutions to assess user's QoE with multimedia services. This paper proposes the QoE-EEG-Analyser that provides a solution to automatically assess and quantify the impact of various factors contributing to user's QoE with multimedia services. The proposed approach makes use of participant's frustration level measured with a consumer-grade EEG system, the Emotiv EPOC. The main advantage of QoE-EEG-Analyser is that it enables continuous assessment of various QoE factors over the entire testing duration, in a non-invasive way, without requiring the user to provide input about his perceived visual quality. Preliminary subjective results have shown that frustration can indicate user's perceived QoE

Towards Objective User Experience (UX) Evaluation Methodologies in Educational Games

Due to the high success of gaming among young people, educational games started to be used in the learning process. Educational games proved to be excellent learning tools, supporting learning by doing, supporting learners in developing and acquiring new skills. However, as compared to entertainment games, the area of educational games is not mature. Major challenges that still need to be overcome in educational games include reducing the development cost and designing assessment methodologies (e.g. user experience, player motivation, game effectiveness etc.) Currently, there is a lack of non-invasive object evaluation methodologies for educational games

Learner Motivation Assessment with <e-Adventure> Game Platform

In order to engage the new generation of learners, educational games were integrated in e-learning. Among the games’ benefits for the learning process one will note their motivational potential. Since learners have different goals, preferences, skills, knowledge, as well as motivation, one-size-fits-all games cannot satisfy and motivate all learners equally. Moreover, during the game play learners’ motivation may easily change, thus motivation assessment is required for enabling motivation-based adaptation. This paper proposes a methodology to assess learner motivation in educational games based on motivation assessment metrics used in the e-learning area. The paper shows how these metrics can be mapped and integrated with an educational game using the game development medium (an authoring tool in this case). The proposed solution can be easily applied to other educational games and can further contribute towards adaptive games that aim to keep players motivated and to support them to achieve the learning outcome

MoGAME : Motivation based Game Level Adaptation Mechanism

Nowadays, students are spending more and more time doing online entertainment activities rather than learning. In this context a lot of research in the area of e-learning was put in combining the entertainment with teaching in order to increase the student motivation for learning. The fact that the learning process may be considered by the students to be a boring and forced process which leads to student de-motivation remains an issue. In this context, educational games were developed in order to support the learning process. This paper presents a Motivation based Game Level Adaptation Mechanism (MoGAME). The proposed mechanism combines motivation assessment and learner knowledge in order to personalise the game difficulty level. Thus, the game will be not too easy to bore the learner and not too hard to be impossible to be played. Providing the learner with real time feedback, acknowledging their results and rewarding their achievements will increase their motivation and their belief that they are capable of continuing with the learning process

Supporting Motivation Based Educational Games Through Web 3.0

Over the past decade there have been significant technological advantages that gradually brought us towards Web 3.0. Web 3.0 represents the next generation of Web that supports semantic and personalised Web. At the same time, the latest technological developments specific to today’s digital era have contributed to significant changes in the area of e-learning in general and educational games in particular. The latest Adaptive e-Learning Systems (AeLS) personalise the educational content and the learning process to better suit learner’s particular needs. However, keeping students motivated for the entire learning session represents a challenging task and therefore measurement and assessment of learner’s motivation is an important research area in the e-learning field. On another hand, due to the high success of gaming among young people, e-learning systems started to integrate games into the learning process. However, currently the educational games do not follow the same trend that sees games in general becoming more affective. Therefore, educational games are not motivational as they should be. This paper bridges research on motivation measurement and assessment from two areas of e-learning and gaming, and presents how various motivation modelling solutions applied in e-learning can be integrated with educational games. This chapter also presents how learner’s motivation can be specified through Web 3.0 using metadata

PlayLearn : Supporting Motivation through Gaming in E-Learning

The area of technology-enhanced e-learning has seen significant improvement during the last decade. E-learning now relies heavily on network conne ctivity and makes use of the latest gadgets for accessing the educational content. At the same time, only a small number of e-learning systems use learning through gaming despite the well known fact that games can act as effective learning environments producing learning experiences that are intrinsically motivating. This paper presents PlayLearn- a new component for the adaptive e-learning systems that supports motivation through gaming. The PlayLearn adds support for playing educational games that aim at transferring knowledge by being both competitive and entertaining so learners will want to return to play again

Assessment of motivation in games based e-learning

The technological developments characteristic to today’s digital era have contributed to significant advances in the area of e-learning and in particular gaming based e-learning. To better suit learners’ particular needs, the latest Adaptive e-Learning Systems (AeLS) personalise the educational content and the learning process according to their knowledge, goals, preferences, etc. However, since keeping students motivated for the entire learning session still represents a challenging task, assessment and measurement of learners motivation is currently one of the main research area in e-learning. On another hand, due to the high success of gaming among young people, e-learning systems started to integrate gaming into the learning process. However, currently the educational games do not follow the same trend that sees games in general becoming more affective. Therefore, they are not motivational as they can be. This paper bridges research from the areas of motivation assessment in e-learning and affective gaming, and presents how various motivation modeling solutions used by e-learning systems, can be used for assessing learners’ motivation in adaptive gaming based e-learning