Socio-cognitive gamification: general framework for educational games

Gamification of learning material has received much interest from researchers in the past years. This paper aims to further improve such learning experience by applying socio-cognitive gamification to educational games. Dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) is a well-known tool in optimizing gaming experience. It is a process to control the parameters in a video game automatically based on user experience in real-time. This method can be extended by using a biofeedback-approach, where certain aspects of the player’s ability is estimated based on physiological measurement (e.g. eye tracking, ECG, EEG). Here, we outline the design of a biofeedback-based framework that supports dynamic difficulty adjustment in educational games. It has a universal architecture, so the concept can be employed to engage users in non-game contexts as well. The framework accepts input from the games, from the physiological sensors and from the so-called supervisor unit. This special unit empowers a new social aspect by enabling another user to observe or intervene during the interaction. To explain the game-user interaction itself in educational games we propose a hybrid model.