Serious Games Get Smart: Intelligent Game-Based Learning Environments

transformative potential of game-based learning environments. The burgeoning field of game-based learning has made significant advances, including theoretical developments (Gee 2007), as well as the creation of gamebased learning environments for a broad range of K–12 subjects (Habgood and Ainsworth 2011; Ketelhut et al. 2010; Warren, Dondlinger, and Barab 2008) and training objectives (Johnson 2010; Kim et al. 2009). Of particular note are the results of recent empirical studies demonstrating that in addition to game-based learning environments’ potential for motivation, they can enable students to achieve learning gains in controlled laboratory settings (Habgood and Ainsworth 2011) as well as classroom settings (Ketelhut et al. 2010). Motivated by the goal of creating game-based learning experiences that are personalized to individual students, we have been investigating intelligent game-based learning environments that leverage commercial game technologies and AI techniques from intelligent tutoring systems (D’Mello and Graesser 2010; Feng, Heffernan, and Koedinger 2009; VanLehn 2006) and intelligent narrative technologies (Lim et al. 2012; McCoy et al. 2011; Si, Marsella, and Pynadath 2009; Yu and Riedl 2012). This work ranges from research on real-time narrative planning and goal recognition to affective computing models for recognizing student emotional states. Intelligent game-based learning environments serve as an excellent laboratory for investigating AI techniques because they make significant inferential demands and play out in complex interactive scenarios. In this article we introduce intelligent game-based learning Articles