Gaming@School: Combining virtual learning environments and intelligent pedagogical agents for a new approach to classroom lessons

The term "digital native" coined by Prensky in 2001-perfectly describes the nowadays students that continuously deal with technology. Thus, technology should be a prominent part of the learning process and should be intended as a support for teachers and learners. In this work, we propose a constructivist approach in which youngsters are called to be the main actors of the learning process and in which a personal construction of their knowledge is a must, starting from their needs and their motivations. Role playing games fit very well these requirements. The approach that we propose in this work combines two fundamental aspects (that commonly are not combined): the integration of Intelligent Pedagogical Agents - IPAs (that provide personalized instruction, increase learner motivation, and act pedagogically on behalf of the learner) in Virtual Learning Environments - VLEs (that add value to the educational process by giving new possibilities and computational-richness support). In this work, we propose that each student has her own IPA (on her own personal device) that guides her throughout the role playing game. © The Authors, 2014