Um modelo de adaptação para Serious Games Educacionais baseado na avaliação de habilidades do jogador

Abstract

The Competence-Based Knowledge Space Theory (CbKST) enables the assessment of player skills by observing their performance in Educational Serious Games (ESG). Given the information on player skills, a ESG can adapt to each person’s abilities. Although its use is relevant in adaptation process, CbKST’s design is aimed at assessing the individual’s cognitive abilities. This aspect is limiting because it disregards educational factors such as player’s affective and psychomotor skills. In addition, adaptation models for ESG have their focus on the choice and presentation of levels according to individual’s abilities. In this sense, its criteria do not explain heuristics that seek to optimize the player’s experience, such as difficulty adjustment and game progression. Thus, the present work has the objective of proposing an adaptation model for ESG capable of evaluating cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills and from them to perform the sequencing of game levels. The proposed model uses the Bloom Taxonomy together with the Dave hierarchy of the psychomotor domain as foundation for ability modeling and proposes a proper method for evaluating player’s abilities. In addition, it is assumed that ESG have a set of milestones that delimits different moments of play, such as introducing new subjects, increasing difficulty, etc. Thus, the proposed model makes use of this set of milestones to be achieved together with player’s abilities information in order to match the challenge to their abilities to enhance their experience. In order to validate the proposed model regarding its applicability, it is applied in the Caixa de Pandora game, an ESG that deals with cognitive and affective aspects related to domestic violence against women. During the proposed model’s application process, it was necessary to adapt the proposed model’s aspects to the Caixa de Pandora game. Despite this, the implemented adaptation process was able to assess player’s skills and adjust game’s challenge accordingly.