Adaptive Behavior with User Modeling and Storyboarding in Serious Games

Game-based learning has a certain potential in the domain of the technological enhanced learning. On the other hand, the advantages of an adaptive system is obvious especially in the educational domain. The process of learning can be improved if a serious game can adapt to the needs, preferences and behavior of the players or the needs of educational experts. However, it is hard to realize highly effective adaptive game because it is difficult for educational experts to realize their didactic ideas directly in the system. In the design phase of the serious game development, storyboards are used as specifications of player experience. In this paper, we describe how adaptive behaviors are implemented in a serious game with the storyboard interpretation technology, with which non-programmers can modify the game system behaviors. To make a system adaptive, the system must learn about the users, build up a user model, and then react or change the system behavior according to the user model. To realize these functionalities in a serious game, we use the Inventory of Learning Styles (LSI) as a user model and the storyboarding to describe different system behaviors depending on the modeled user profiles. Taking a large-scale training applications in the training of disaster management staff as an example, we show how different system behaviors are represented in a storyboard. Through the description of the example, we show that storyboard is an effective tool to change the learning environment for educational experts who are not familiar with programming language.