Educational games such as quizzes, quests, puzzles, mazes and logical
problems may be modeled as multimedia board games. In the scope of the
ADOPTA project1 being under development at the Faculty of Mathematics and
Informatics at Sofia University, a formal model for presentation of such
educational board games was invented and elaborated. Educational games can be
modeled as special board mini-games, with a board of any form and any types of
positions. Over defined positions, figures (objects) with certain properties are
placed and, next, there are to be defined formal rules for manipulation of these
figures and resulted effects.
The model has been found to be general enough in order to allow description
and execution control of more complex logical problems to be solved by several
actions delivered to/by the player according some formal rules and context
conditions and, in general, of any learning activities and their workflow. It is used
as a base for creation of a software platform providing facilities for easy
construction of multimedia board games and their execution. The platform consists
of game designer (i.e., a game authoring tool) and game run-time controller
communicating each other through game repository. There are created and
modeled many examples of educational board games appropriate for didactic
purposes, self evaluations, etc., which are supposed to be designed easily by
authors with no IT skills and experience. By means of game metadata descriptions,
these games are going be included into narrative storyboards and, next, delivered to
learners with appropriate profile according their learning style, preferences, etc.
Moreover, usage of artificial intelligence agents is planned as well β once as
playing virtual opponents of the player or, otherwise, being virtual advisers of the
gamer helping him/her in finding the right problem solution within given domain
such as discovering a treasure using a location map, finding best tour in a virtual
museum, guessing an unknown word in a hangman game, and many others