Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 2010
In last twenty years, researchers have conducted intensive research in the area of principal mode... more In last twenty years, researchers have conducted intensive research in the area of principal models, software architectures and practical system development of adaptive e-learning platforms. Brains are fascinated by great opportunities for radical improvement of the teaching process by means of applying adaptability at different levels. There are two general issues of adaptive e-learningenabling different educational content delivered to different individuals or groups and, as well, differently formed sequencing and presentation of that content delivery. This paper presents two approaches for creating and delivering training courses adaptable to learners with different learning styles. The first one is implemented within a platform for building edutainment (education plus entertainment) services called ADOPTA (ADaptive technOlogyenhanced Platform for eduTAinment). By means of ADOPTA, e-learning courses can be created manually by an instructor as directed storyboard graphs. Another feasible approach is to generate them automatically on-the-fly by the adaptive engine. The article discusses advantages and drawbacks of these two approaches for adaptive e-learning course construction.
Many universities have designed specialized Learning Management Systems in order to facilitate th... more Many universities have designed specialized Learning Management Systems in order to facilitate the management of education, the access to knowledge and educational resources, and the communications with all stakeholders involved. With the wide spread of mobile technologies nowadays, new challenges emerge for adapting the available systems to the demands of mobile users. The authors present the results of a pilot project of the
In educational serious games, the learning curve of a player represents his/her progress in acqui... more In educational serious games, the learning curve of a player represents his/her progress in acquiring cognitive abilities and new knowledge necessary for solving the game challenges. Hence, it is very important for an adaptive serious game to have a mechanism for detection of patterns of player´s learning curve in playing time. The paper presents the application of a game adaptation method based on automatic and dynamically detection of specific learning curves at runtime within a 3D video game of car driving in various weather conditions. The method uses a client-side software component called "Player-centric rule-and-pattern-based adaptation asset" and developed within the scope of the RAGE (Realising and Applied Gaming Ecosystem) H2020 project. The component is incorporated into a 3D car driving video game in order to enable a dynamic detection of different patterns of player performance. It allows the video game scenario to be adapted to each player by providing appropriately for him/her challenges and game features. We carried out a practical experiment with students from Sofia University, Bulgaria, where we found that adaptation of game difficulty by applying the RAGE software component resulted to improved game playability.
Interactive Technology and Smart Education, Apr 18, 2017
Purpose This paper aims to clarify how affect-based adaptation can improve implicit recognition o... more Purpose This paper aims to clarify how affect-based adaptation can improve implicit recognition of playing style of individuals during game sessions. This study presents the “Rush for Gold” game using dynamic difficulty adjustment of tasks based on both player performance and affectation inferred through electrodermal activity and facial expressions of the player. The game applies linear regression for calculating playing styles to be applied for achieving a style-based adaptation in other educational video games. Design/methodology/approach The experimental procedure included subject selection, demonstration, informed consent procedure, two game sessions in random order – one without and another with affective adaptation control – and post-game self-report. The experiment was conducted with participation of 30 master students and university lecturers in informatics. Findings This study presents experimental results concerning the impact of affective adaptation over playing style recognition, game session time, task’s effectiveness, efficiency and difficulty and, as well, player’s assessment of affectively adaptive gameplay obtained by an adaptation control panel embedded into the game and by post-game self-report. Research limitations/implications The proposed adaptive game limits recognised styles to such based on the Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory model. Another limitation of the study is the relatively small number of participants constrained by the extended experimental procedure and the desktop game version. Originality/value The paper presents an original research on the effect of affect-based adaptation on a novel approach for implicit recognition of playing styles.
Proceedings of the 9th Balkan Conference on Informatics, 2019
Smart services extend the level of human-computer interaction (HCI) by automating service' pe... more Smart services extend the level of human-computer interaction (HCI) by automating service' personalization and adaptation, based on end-user profiling, analytics, and context of use. On the other hand, the design of adaptable solutions such as educational video games is a challenging and demanding task. By adopting smart services functionality on a game design platform, we want to support teachers and educational experts to create and implement adaptable educational maze video games. The present research aims to conceptualize a maze video game platform functionality based on smart services. Starting with smart services overview, the paper focuses on the APOGEE maze video game platform, its software architecture and modules. Then, the assistive and analytics services of the APOGEE platform are explored, along with the workflow of the maze video game design process presenting how the assistive services take decisions based on outcomes provided by the learning and gaming analytics. Together with the platform overview, the workflow explanation determines the main platform features. The defined process flow aims to support teachers and education professionals to design and build adaptable and personalized video games and apply them for their educational practices.
Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies, 2020
Universities need to increasingly adapt their educational methods in order to prepare the new gen... more Universities need to increasingly adapt their educational methods in order to prepare the new generation of experts with additional skills for the future of work. Especially in the field of ICT, besides proficiency in theoretical and subject-related ICT knowledge and practical programming skills, young graduates have to demonstrate mastery in different transversal and soft skills. Taking into account that the ICT sector is one of the most knowledge-intensive, export-oriented and globally recognized sectors in Bulgaria, the quality of the ICT training is substantially important for its future competitiveness and growth. Stepping on a theoretical framework for 21st century skills, the present research aims to outline what are the key 21st century skills of the young graduates, as evaluated by ICT employers and University lecturers. By presenting the outcomes of ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with company owners, business leaders, HR managers, and academics, the paper outlines the main trends and rankings of the soft skills for ICT graduates, without taking in consideration the specific professional competences or subject-related knowledge. The first part introduces the context, the methodology and the scope of the research. The outcomes of the interviews are presented both as quantitative figures and as specific comments of the participants, highlighting different practical aspects. Finally, the current analysis provides fruitful insights and recommendations about the new types of methods for training relevant for the ICT sector 21st century skills.
Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Software Technologies, 2019
Nowadays, the integration of serious video games into educational and training processes tends to... more Nowadays, the integration of serious video games into educational and training processes tends to be more and more popular. The present paper outlines the software architecture of an innovative online platform for an automatized construction of educational video games, which is going to allow non-IT professionals such as teachers, pedagogues, and educationalists to design, automatically generate and personalize educational video games based on a formal descriptive game model. The games represent rich educational video mazes providing didactic multimedia content personalized upon various characteristics of the player. The construction process includes three stages: game design, game validation, and game generation. The integration of analytics tools into the platform will monitor all of the platform's data and processes hence will facilitate the platform users to make more adaptive, effective, and efficient video maze games for education.
in Barcelona, Spain, was an event on social eco-informatics, bridging different social and inform... more in Barcelona, Spain, was an event on social eco-informatics, bridging different social and informatics concepts by considering digital domains, social metrics, social applications, services, and challenges. We take here the opportunity to warmly thank all the members of the SOTICS 2014 technical program committee, as well as all of the reviewers. We also kindly thank all the authors who dedicated much of their time and effort to contribute to SOTICS 2014. We truly believe that, thanks to all these efforts, the final conference program consisted of top quality contributions. We also gratefully thank the members of the SOTICS 2014 organizing committee for their help in handling the logistics and for their work that made this professional meeting a success. We hope that SOTICS 2014 was a successful international forum for the exchange of ideas and results between academia and industry and to promote further progress in the area of social eco-informatics. We also hope Barcelona provided...
All computing systems nowadays are collecting and processing data from various sources, ranges, a... more All computing systems nowadays are collecting and processing data from various sources, ranges, and applications. This, in turn, leads to new kinds of problems for the software engineering community to focus on. As a result, there is a shift from software-intensive systems toward data-intensive systems. More challenges reside in size (e.g., amount of data), complexity, heterogeneity, and velocity. This requires activities that differ from solving traditional software development problems.This article will present the fundamental challenges when designing data-intensive systems and discuss some of the most popular software architectural styles together with their potential to tackle these challenges.When architecting an information system that processes substantial amounts of data, the system architects may face many problems of various kinds. The most important of them, are as follows:•Challenges in data management •Potential issues in system design or implementation•Issues in messa...
This deliverable presents and describes the first delivery of assets that are part of the core so... more This deliverable presents and describes the first delivery of assets that are part of the core social agency bundle. In total, the bundle includes 16 assets, divided into 4 main categories. Each category is related to a type of challenge that developers of applied games are typically faced with and the aim of the included assets is to provide solutions to those challenges. The main goal of this document is to provide the reader with a description for each included asset, accompanied by links to their source code, distributable versions, demonstrations and documentation. A short discussion of what are the future steps for each asset is also given. The primary audience for the contents of this deliverable are the game developers, both inside and outside of the project, which can use this document as an official list of the current social agency assets and their associated resources. Note that the information about which RAGE use cases are using which of these assets is described in De...
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 2011
Traditionally, adaptive assessment methods and tools have been addressed only by application of c... more Traditionally, adaptive assessment methods and tools have been addressed only by application of computerized adaptive testing and item response theory as a key instrument for practical construction of adaptive test assessments. The present paper tries to give a broader view of adaptive assessment, where tests are not the only instrument for evaluation of learners outcomes gained during a course. It shows how adaptive task-based assessment may be combined with traditional adaptive test assessment for achieving better results and higher student satisfaction. Various types of tasks have been found suitable for adaptive assessment based on learning styles and student knowledge level. By means of constructing course storyboard with several branches for different learning styles, it has been proven that games, essay, observation, comparative analysis tasks, projects and auto-generated tests may be used successfully for a complex adaptive assessment. There have been explored approaches such as self-, peer-and teacher-(i.e., host) assessment by using appropriate types of estimable learning objects.
Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage
In technology-enhanced education, the “serious games” method is accepted as a research, pedagogic... more In technology-enhanced education, the “serious games” method is accepted as a research, pedagogic, and evaluative tool. The method helps instructors to motivate student learning, curiosity, creative and logical thought, as well as develop a variety of skills and competencies. Serious educational games aim to cultivate better comprehension strategies, creative thinking, learning-by-doing (production, authorship), and students’ engagement in their own cognition and learning processes. The first information day will present the scholarly and scholarly-practical outcomes of the Serious Education Games as Contemporary Tools for New Educational Applications project, Contract DSD-2/05.04.2017, between the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, activity Introduction of Contemporary Methods in Educating and Fostering Young Talent (PMC No347).
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 2010
In last twenty years, researchers have conducted intensive research in the area of principal mode... more In last twenty years, researchers have conducted intensive research in the area of principal models, software architectures and practical system development of adaptive e-learning platforms. Brains are fascinated by great opportunities for radical improvement of the teaching process by means of applying adaptability at different levels. There are two general issues of adaptive e-learningenabling different educational content delivered to different individuals or groups and, as well, differently formed sequencing and presentation of that content delivery. This paper presents two approaches for creating and delivering training courses adaptable to learners with different learning styles. The first one is implemented within a platform for building edutainment (education plus entertainment) services called ADOPTA (ADaptive technOlogyenhanced Platform for eduTAinment). By means of ADOPTA, e-learning courses can be created manually by an instructor as directed storyboard graphs. Another feasible approach is to generate them automatically on-the-fly by the adaptive engine. The article discusses advantages and drawbacks of these two approaches for adaptive e-learning course construction.
Many universities have designed specialized Learning Management Systems in order to facilitate th... more Many universities have designed specialized Learning Management Systems in order to facilitate the management of education, the access to knowledge and educational resources, and the communications with all stakeholders involved. With the wide spread of mobile technologies nowadays, new challenges emerge for adapting the available systems to the demands of mobile users. The authors present the results of a pilot project of the
In educational serious games, the learning curve of a player represents his/her progress in acqui... more In educational serious games, the learning curve of a player represents his/her progress in acquiring cognitive abilities and new knowledge necessary for solving the game challenges. Hence, it is very important for an adaptive serious game to have a mechanism for detection of patterns of player´s learning curve in playing time. The paper presents the application of a game adaptation method based on automatic and dynamically detection of specific learning curves at runtime within a 3D video game of car driving in various weather conditions. The method uses a client-side software component called "Player-centric rule-and-pattern-based adaptation asset" and developed within the scope of the RAGE (Realising and Applied Gaming Ecosystem) H2020 project. The component is incorporated into a 3D car driving video game in order to enable a dynamic detection of different patterns of player performance. It allows the video game scenario to be adapted to each player by providing appropriately for him/her challenges and game features. We carried out a practical experiment with students from Sofia University, Bulgaria, where we found that adaptation of game difficulty by applying the RAGE software component resulted to improved game playability.
Interactive Technology and Smart Education, Apr 18, 2017
Purpose This paper aims to clarify how affect-based adaptation can improve implicit recognition o... more Purpose This paper aims to clarify how affect-based adaptation can improve implicit recognition of playing style of individuals during game sessions. This study presents the “Rush for Gold” game using dynamic difficulty adjustment of tasks based on both player performance and affectation inferred through electrodermal activity and facial expressions of the player. The game applies linear regression for calculating playing styles to be applied for achieving a style-based adaptation in other educational video games. Design/methodology/approach The experimental procedure included subject selection, demonstration, informed consent procedure, two game sessions in random order – one without and another with affective adaptation control – and post-game self-report. The experiment was conducted with participation of 30 master students and university lecturers in informatics. Findings This study presents experimental results concerning the impact of affective adaptation over playing style recognition, game session time, task’s effectiveness, efficiency and difficulty and, as well, player’s assessment of affectively adaptive gameplay obtained by an adaptation control panel embedded into the game and by post-game self-report. Research limitations/implications The proposed adaptive game limits recognised styles to such based on the Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory model. Another limitation of the study is the relatively small number of participants constrained by the extended experimental procedure and the desktop game version. Originality/value The paper presents an original research on the effect of affect-based adaptation on a novel approach for implicit recognition of playing styles.
Proceedings of the 9th Balkan Conference on Informatics, 2019
Smart services extend the level of human-computer interaction (HCI) by automating service' pe... more Smart services extend the level of human-computer interaction (HCI) by automating service' personalization and adaptation, based on end-user profiling, analytics, and context of use. On the other hand, the design of adaptable solutions such as educational video games is a challenging and demanding task. By adopting smart services functionality on a game design platform, we want to support teachers and educational experts to create and implement adaptable educational maze video games. The present research aims to conceptualize a maze video game platform functionality based on smart services. Starting with smart services overview, the paper focuses on the APOGEE maze video game platform, its software architecture and modules. Then, the assistive and analytics services of the APOGEE platform are explored, along with the workflow of the maze video game design process presenting how the assistive services take decisions based on outcomes provided by the learning and gaming analytics. Together with the platform overview, the workflow explanation determines the main platform features. The defined process flow aims to support teachers and education professionals to design and build adaptable and personalized video games and apply them for their educational practices.
Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies, 2020
Universities need to increasingly adapt their educational methods in order to prepare the new gen... more Universities need to increasingly adapt their educational methods in order to prepare the new generation of experts with additional skills for the future of work. Especially in the field of ICT, besides proficiency in theoretical and subject-related ICT knowledge and practical programming skills, young graduates have to demonstrate mastery in different transversal and soft skills. Taking into account that the ICT sector is one of the most knowledge-intensive, export-oriented and globally recognized sectors in Bulgaria, the quality of the ICT training is substantially important for its future competitiveness and growth. Stepping on a theoretical framework for 21st century skills, the present research aims to outline what are the key 21st century skills of the young graduates, as evaluated by ICT employers and University lecturers. By presenting the outcomes of ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with company owners, business leaders, HR managers, and academics, the paper outlines the main trends and rankings of the soft skills for ICT graduates, without taking in consideration the specific professional competences or subject-related knowledge. The first part introduces the context, the methodology and the scope of the research. The outcomes of the interviews are presented both as quantitative figures and as specific comments of the participants, highlighting different practical aspects. Finally, the current analysis provides fruitful insights and recommendations about the new types of methods for training relevant for the ICT sector 21st century skills.
Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Software Technologies, 2019
Nowadays, the integration of serious video games into educational and training processes tends to... more Nowadays, the integration of serious video games into educational and training processes tends to be more and more popular. The present paper outlines the software architecture of an innovative online platform for an automatized construction of educational video games, which is going to allow non-IT professionals such as teachers, pedagogues, and educationalists to design, automatically generate and personalize educational video games based on a formal descriptive game model. The games represent rich educational video mazes providing didactic multimedia content personalized upon various characteristics of the player. The construction process includes three stages: game design, game validation, and game generation. The integration of analytics tools into the platform will monitor all of the platform's data and processes hence will facilitate the platform users to make more adaptive, effective, and efficient video maze games for education.
in Barcelona, Spain, was an event on social eco-informatics, bridging different social and inform... more in Barcelona, Spain, was an event on social eco-informatics, bridging different social and informatics concepts by considering digital domains, social metrics, social applications, services, and challenges. We take here the opportunity to warmly thank all the members of the SOTICS 2014 technical program committee, as well as all of the reviewers. We also kindly thank all the authors who dedicated much of their time and effort to contribute to SOTICS 2014. We truly believe that, thanks to all these efforts, the final conference program consisted of top quality contributions. We also gratefully thank the members of the SOTICS 2014 organizing committee for their help in handling the logistics and for their work that made this professional meeting a success. We hope that SOTICS 2014 was a successful international forum for the exchange of ideas and results between academia and industry and to promote further progress in the area of social eco-informatics. We also hope Barcelona provided...
All computing systems nowadays are collecting and processing data from various sources, ranges, a... more All computing systems nowadays are collecting and processing data from various sources, ranges, and applications. This, in turn, leads to new kinds of problems for the software engineering community to focus on. As a result, there is a shift from software-intensive systems toward data-intensive systems. More challenges reside in size (e.g., amount of data), complexity, heterogeneity, and velocity. This requires activities that differ from solving traditional software development problems.This article will present the fundamental challenges when designing data-intensive systems and discuss some of the most popular software architectural styles together with their potential to tackle these challenges.When architecting an information system that processes substantial amounts of data, the system architects may face many problems of various kinds. The most important of them, are as follows:•Challenges in data management •Potential issues in system design or implementation•Issues in messa...
This deliverable presents and describes the first delivery of assets that are part of the core so... more This deliverable presents and describes the first delivery of assets that are part of the core social agency bundle. In total, the bundle includes 16 assets, divided into 4 main categories. Each category is related to a type of challenge that developers of applied games are typically faced with and the aim of the included assets is to provide solutions to those challenges. The main goal of this document is to provide the reader with a description for each included asset, accompanied by links to their source code, distributable versions, demonstrations and documentation. A short discussion of what are the future steps for each asset is also given. The primary audience for the contents of this deliverable are the game developers, both inside and outside of the project, which can use this document as an official list of the current social agency assets and their associated resources. Note that the information about which RAGE use cases are using which of these assets is described in De...
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 2011
Traditionally, adaptive assessment methods and tools have been addressed only by application of c... more Traditionally, adaptive assessment methods and tools have been addressed only by application of computerized adaptive testing and item response theory as a key instrument for practical construction of adaptive test assessments. The present paper tries to give a broader view of adaptive assessment, where tests are not the only instrument for evaluation of learners outcomes gained during a course. It shows how adaptive task-based assessment may be combined with traditional adaptive test assessment for achieving better results and higher student satisfaction. Various types of tasks have been found suitable for adaptive assessment based on learning styles and student knowledge level. By means of constructing course storyboard with several branches for different learning styles, it has been proven that games, essay, observation, comparative analysis tasks, projects and auto-generated tests may be used successfully for a complex adaptive assessment. There have been explored approaches such as self-, peer-and teacher-(i.e., host) assessment by using appropriate types of estimable learning objects.
Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage
In technology-enhanced education, the “serious games” method is accepted as a research, pedagogic... more In technology-enhanced education, the “serious games” method is accepted as a research, pedagogic, and evaluative tool. The method helps instructors to motivate student learning, curiosity, creative and logical thought, as well as develop a variety of skills and competencies. Serious educational games aim to cultivate better comprehension strategies, creative thinking, learning-by-doing (production, authorship), and students’ engagement in their own cognition and learning processes. The first information day will present the scholarly and scholarly-practical outcomes of the Serious Education Games as Contemporary Tools for New Educational Applications project, Contract DSD-2/05.04.2017, between the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, activity Introduction of Contemporary Methods in Educating and Fostering Young Talent (PMC No347).
Serious video games are widely applied in education, health, safety and training and, thus, help ... more Serious video games are widely applied in education, health, safety and training and, thus, help modern e-society in building efficiently knowledge, problem-solving and soft skills, creativity and conceptual thinking. However, though their proven social and cultural impact, applied games require relatively high production costs and offer lower perceived quality compared to the contemporary entertainment games. One promising solution of this problem is creation of adaptive applied video games, which identify implicitly specifics of each individual player (learner) during the game and use them to adjust dynamically some game tasks and features for fitting best that individual. Therefore, adaptive video games need solid modelling of player competences, emotions and styles, in order to achieve better player experiences and, hence, an enhanced overall playability.
The invited talk discusses modern trends and challenges in recent development and application of adaptive video games. It goes through theoretical behavior player models describing dynamic processes of player behavior and emotions during playing the game, and organizational models of player describing properties, attributes and facets of player’s competences. There are discussed possible interconnections among them with time and model space constrains useful for affect-based game adaptation. The speech presents briefly the key ideas and results of the European project ADAPTIMES (ADAPTIve player-centric serious video gaMES), where measuring player’s performance and playing styles is combined with recognition of player’s emotional states and applied for adapting dynamically features of game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics in order to improve player’s engagement, immersion, excitement, and challenge.
Serious video games are widely applied in education, health, safety and training and, thus, help ... more Serious video games are widely applied in education, health, safety and training and, thus, help modern e-society in building efficiently knowledge, problem-solving and soft skills, creativity and conceptual thinking. However, though their proven social and cultural impact, applied games require relatively high production costs and offer lower perceived quality compared to the contemporary entertainment games. One promising solution of this problem is creation of adaptive applied video games, which identify implicitly specifics of each individual player (learner) during the game and use them to adjust dynamically some game tasks and features for fitting best that individual. Therefore, adaptive video games need solid modelling of player competences, emotions and styles, in order to achieve better player experiences and, hence, an enhanced overall playability. The invited talk discusses modern trends and challenges in recent development and application of adaptive video games. It goes through theoretical behavior player models describing dynamic processes of player behavior and emotions during playing the game, and organizational models of player describing properties, attributes and facets of player’s competences. There are discussed possible interconnections among them with time and model space constrains useful for affect-based game adaptation. The speech presents briefly the key ideas and results of the European project ADAPTIMES (ADAPTIve player-centric serious video gaMES), where measuring player’s performance and playing styles is combined with recognition of player’s emotional states and applied for adapting dynamically features of game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics in order to improve player’s engagement, immersion, excitement, and challenge.
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Papers by Boyan Bontchev
The invited talk discusses modern trends and challenges in recent development and application of adaptive video games. It goes through theoretical behavior player models describing dynamic processes of player behavior and emotions during playing the game, and organizational models of player describing properties, attributes and facets of player’s competences. There are discussed possible interconnections among them with time and model space constrains useful for affect-based game adaptation. The speech presents briefly the key ideas and results of the European project ADAPTIMES (ADAPTIve player-centric serious video gaMES), where measuring player’s performance and playing styles is combined with recognition of player’s emotional states and applied for adapting dynamically features of game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics in order to improve player’s engagement, immersion, excitement, and challenge.
The invited talk discusses modern trends and challenges in recent development and application of adaptive video games. It goes through theoretical behavior player models describing dynamic processes of player behavior and emotions during playing the game, and organizational models of player describing properties, attributes and facets of player’s competences. There are discussed possible interconnections among them with time and model space constrains useful for affect-based game adaptation. The speech presents briefly the key ideas and results of the European project ADAPTIMES (ADAPTIve player-centric serious video gaMES), where measuring player’s performance and playing styles is combined with recognition of player’s emotional states and applied for adapting dynamically features of game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics in order to improve player’s engagement, immersion, excitement, and challenge.