About including a virtual teacher in a competitive or collaborative context in AlgoPath

Abstract

AlgoPath is an entertainment program to help students with no classical computer science background understand the main concepts of algorithmics. It looks like a serious game in which the player builds a world of concrete, paths and grass. We show in this paper that the inner model of AlgoPath is based on the Model-View-Controller architecture (MVC). We intend to add a virtual teacher in this architecture, who oversees the players' interactions and intervenes when the interactions do not correspond to what is expected by a real teacher. We explain how the model of the virtual teacher interacts with the Controller component of the architecture. We describe the model that lets a real teacher add his particular comments for the various mistakes that can be made by a player. We explore the solutions to implement two multiplayer gameplay types: a competitive one, in which two or several players fight against one another to be the first to find the best algorithm, and a collaborative one, in which they have to find the best algorithm as a team. Finally, we explain our choice to develop the distributed version of AlgoPath with Unity.