Emotional modelling to enhance learning in games

A UN Sustainable Development Goal is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelonglearning opportunities for all.

The project results contribute to improving the future of education for all and havedirect scientific, societal, and technological impacts.

Current education solutions are limited to a one-size-fits-all paradigm, unable to support diverse learning needs, and contribute to learning exclusion and gender inequality.

State-of-the-art (SOA): Game-based learning environments (GBLEs) bring to bear capabilities that not only shatter physical barriers to education via digital learning, but game mechanics built into GBLEs can be customized and adapted to support diverse learning needs.

Game mechanics are important because they sustain learners engagement and interest in learning activities, which elicit cognitive processes that water the seeds of learning. Still, more research is needed to develop adaptive game mechanics to support diverse learning needs.

The mission of this research is to study interactions between game mechanics and emotions as a non-linear dynamical system and observe the impact of such interactions between diverse learners cognition and learning outcomes with GBLEs.

In this European Fellowship titled, emotionAl Modelling to Enhance Learning In gAmes (AMELIA), we propose to conduct a mixed multimodal methods study to observe relations between game mechanic interactions and in-game emotions, cognition, and learning outcomes by collecting multiple data channels ranging from think-aloud recordings to neurofunctional measures between gender dimensions.

AMELIA will be carried out at Tampere University (host) with supervisor Kristian Kiili and co-supervisor Manuel Ninaus (secondment) at the University of Graz. AMELIA is implemented in collaboration with an international game company called Psyon Games.