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Adaptive Serious Educational Games using Machine Learning

Ar Rosyid, Harits

[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2018.

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Abstract

The ultimate goals of adaptive serious educational games (adaptive SEG) are to promote effective learning and maximising enjoyment for players. Firstly, we develop the SEG by combining knowledge space (learning materials) and game content space to be used to convey learning materials. We propose a novel approach that serves toward minimising experts' involvement in mapping learning materials to game content space. We categorise both content spaces using known procedures and apply BIRCH clustering algorithm to categorise the similarity of the game content. Then, we map both content spaces based on the statistical properties and/or by the knowledge learning handout. Secondly, we construct a predictive model by learning data sets constructed through a survey on public testers who labelled their in-game data with their reported experiences. A Random Forest algorithm non-intrusively predicts experiences via the game data. Lastly, it is not feasible to manually select or adapt the content from both spaces because of the immense amount of options available. Therefore, we apply reinforcement learning technique to generate a series of learning goals that promote an efficient learning for the player. Subsequently, a combination of conditional branching and agglomerative hierarchical clustering select the most appropriate game content for each selected education material. For a proof-of-concept, we apply the proposed approach to producing the SEG, named Chem Dungeon, as a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods.

Bibliographic metadata

Type of resource:
Content type:
Form of thesis:
Type of submission:
Degree type:
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree programme:
PhD Computer Science
Publication date:
Location:
Manchester, UK
Total pages:
203
Abstract:
The ultimate goals of adaptive serious educational games (adaptive SEG) are to promote effective learning and maximising enjoyment for players. Firstly, we develop the SEG by combining knowledge space (learning materials) and game content space to be used to convey learning materials. We propose a novel approach that serves toward minimising experts' involvement in mapping learning materials to game content space. We categorise both content spaces using known procedures and apply BIRCH clustering algorithm to categorise the similarity of the game content. Then, we map both content spaces based on the statistical properties and/or by the knowledge learning handout. Secondly, we construct a predictive model by learning data sets constructed through a survey on public testers who labelled their in-game data with their reported experiences. A Random Forest algorithm non-intrusively predicts experiences via the game data. Lastly, it is not feasible to manually select or adapt the content from both spaces because of the immense amount of options available. Therefore, we apply reinforcement learning technique to generate a series of learning goals that promote an efficient learning for the player. Subsequently, a combination of conditional branching and agglomerative hierarchical clustering select the most appropriate game content for each selected education material. For a proof-of-concept, we apply the proposed approach to producing the SEG, named Chem Dungeon, as a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods.
Thesis main supervisor(s):
Thesis co-supervisor(s):
Language:
en

Institutional metadata

University researcher(s):

Record metadata

Manchester eScholar ID:
uk-ac-man-scw:316501
Created by:
Ar Rosyid, Harits
Created:
26th September, 2018, 14:22:50
Last modified by:
Ar Rosyid, Harits
Last modified:
4th October, 2018, 12:39:55

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