Mapping and Simulation of Educational Games Using a State Transition Diagram and a Rules Base

When educators are planning their classes, one of most challenge tasks is to awaken students’ interest for the lesson content. The use of educational games may support teachers to reach this goal. However, this strategy requires high investments. This paper proposes that a formal model and a knowledge base (KB) that can map all necessary details of an educational game, allowing the simulation in a computational environment. Also, this work shows a software able to interpret that formal model and to understand the KB by use of an inference engine. With these resources, the software simulates an educational game, offering students it on the Internet. The first step for the game creation starts with the manufacture of the formal model and the KB. This paper uses a state transition diagram (STD), which can map all possible paths in a specific game. This model mapped the dynamic of several educational games tested. Besides the STD, we used a KB to store rules used in the game control. After mapping the game, teachers must submit the model to the built program. The program reads the model and simulates the mapped game in a computational environment. It has an inference engine that controls the games’ flow by the various states of the game. The start stage is equivalent to the initial state of the STD. Users may pass to the next stage only if they fulfill the game rules. The final state of the STD is equivalent to the final stage of the game. To show a feasibility of the proposed approach, some educational games were developed and used in practical classes. The game creation is a hard task, and however, teachers may improve it indefinitely. In addition, teachers may exchange their games between them, creating a gaming base in their institution. The work conclude that objectives were reached, due to the proposed model can map all educational game figured out by participating teachers and the software is able to simulate all the games mapped in the proposed formal model.