Questions and Issues in Developing a Modular Narrative Learning Environment

We are developing an Interactive Story Architecture for Training (ISAT) that combines the user-adaptive features of an intelligent tutoring system with the story management capability of a scenario director to provide a training experience that is tailored to individual trainee needs—both dramatic and pedagogical. Another unique contribution of this effort is the development of an authoring tool that will facilitate the input of dramatic and pedagogical content by a non-programmer. The envisioned result of ISAT is a seamless integration of interactive story and individually-guided instruction. The current ISAT prototype is tightly coupled with the training simulation and the corresponding domain knowledge. This is in contrast to a truly modular architecture design that could accommodate a variety of training needs, domains, and simulations. Therefore, we propose a core architecture that would be supplemented by specialized, modular plug-ins to support unique training-dependent or simulation-dependent needs. In designing this modular architecture, we have identified several basic questions about how to develop the modular architecture so that it appropriately addresses a variety of training contexts and available simulation tools. We present these questions, and our initial considerations of them, in this paper.

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