5 DISCUSSION & CONCLUSIONS
This paper addressed the issue of automated scenario
generation within the context of an Adaptive Educa-
tional Game (AEG). The proposed framework inte-
grates a hybrid HTN planner to plan the trainee’s ac-
tions with a content selection mechanism based on
Smart Objects to control the realisation of the sce-
nario within the game world. This results in a separa-
tion of the action plan construction - enabling the re-
trieval of the scenario’s underlying didactic intentions
- and the game world creation - enabling the use of
a separate smart objects database which is easily ex-
tended, in contrast to hard-coded objects in the plan-
ner itself. Although the evaluation experiment did
not provide significant results, the authors are hopeful
that further experimentation will provide more defini-
tive answers.
Several directions for further research can be sug-
gested. First of all, the experiment showed that some
of the desired functionalities of the system interfered
with its primary goal of producing scenarios with a
complexity level that fits the skill level of the trainee.
Since the prototype generated complete training exer-
cises, additional tasks were addressed in the scenario
on top of the learning task. Because a global diffi-
culty level was used, the trainee is expected to per-
form the additional tasks at the same difficulty level as
the learning task. This combination of multiple tasks
seemed too much to handle for the trainee. Two pos-
sible (and complimentary) solutions are the integra-
tion of a more fine-grained difficulty control system
such as for example a performance curve suggested
by Zook et al. (2012) and the introduction of ‘col-
league agents’ that take over part of the responsibili-
ties of the trainee. A second suggestion for further re-
search is the comparison of the different approaches
proposed for automated scenario generation. So far
it has been difficult to compare different approaches
since each system uses its own standards and criteria.
However, a comparison might be highly informative
and show the strengths and weaknesses of the differ-
ent approaches, possibly leading to hybrid solutions.
To conclude, the framework presented here is a
first step towards a system that can generate effective
and personalized scenarios automatically. In the fu-
ture, attaching the system to a game-based training
program will offer trainees extensive access to high-
quality training opportunities.
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