Testing game applications relies heavily on beta testing methods. The effectiveness of beta testing depends on how well beta testers represent the common game-application users and if users are willing to participate in the beta test. An automated testing tool framework could reduce the dependence upon beta testing by most companies to analyze their game applications. This paper presents the Crushinator as one such framework. This framework provides a game-independent testing tool that implements multiple testing methods that can assist and possibly replace the use of beta testing.

On-a-slant village was inhabited by the Mandan, a sedentary native north American tribe, up until the late18th century. The on-a-slant "virtual village" has been constructed by the Worldwide Web Instructional Committee at North Dakota State University using archaeological records and other source materials to authenticallyre-create that space with 3D-rendered graphics. The environment now serves as an exploratory, immersive environment for teaching middle-school students about long-ago society. This paper describes the construction of the virtual village and its earth lodges, the software agent avatars who inhabit the space, and the role-playing game the students play in order to learn about the Mandan and their culture. Data collected over three years show that significant learning is accomplished through playing the on-a-slant game.

In this paper, we describe a customized instructional content delivery system named ProgrammingLand with special emphasis on a program evaluation module named TorqueMOODa. The system is fully online and is used as a component of several classroom courses, as well the foundation of comparable distance education classes. The context of these systems is the early programming classes often taken by introductory Computer Science students, among others.

Planet Oit is a multiuser virtual environment used to teach geologic concepts and the scientific method. It is built on a structured system of modules and goals arranged so that students have freedom, but have direction as well. Intelligent software tutors explain geologic concepts, guide the players in achieving their goals, and assist them in understanding the environment. Planet Oit and its system of goals, tutors, and scaffolding are described.

One of the goals of science education is to familiarize students with an intellectual framework based on established scientific principles and general approaches that can later be used to solve science-based problems. Science is also content-based, and students must master the content of a discipline in order to succeed. The challenge for science educators is to develop educational tools and methods that deliver the principles but at the same time teach the important content material, but in a meaningful way. The paper describes research based on experimental virtual role-based environments built to explore the following beliefs: educational technology should capitalize on the natural human propensity for role-playing; students will be willing to assume roles if the environment makes it easy to do, and if the environment reinforces role-playing through careful crafting of explicit tutorial components; that educational software should be engaging, entertaining, attractive, interactive, and flexible: in short, game-like. The experiences provided to the student within these virtual worlds can be both meaningful and authentic, although some trade-offs are required to make them fun, challenging, and occasionally unpredictable.

Stories are an accessible medium of communication, and interactive dialog, with an expert teacher is a time-proven method of tutoring and mentoring. A natural way to explore complex material is to ask questions and listen to answers: and answers can often take the form of stories. Given a collection of texts and a user who wants access to the knowledge contained there, how can the texts be analyzed and connected such that the knowledge is maximally available to the user? There are two things the user must be able to do: focus and browse. In order to facilitate a focused interaction the texts must be represented in a natural way. In order for the user to creatively browse, however, the texts must also be connected in a remindful way that allows users to follow tangents and change topics easily. The tools for creating these structures are essential to the success of the eventual teaching environment. The article focuses on the particular AI requirements for these tools, recent progress in achieving these requirements and lessons we have learned along the way.>

Story grammar was a fairly hot topic in artificial intelligence (AI) from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Now, however, it has virtually disappeared as a research issue in AI. The process of science is one where theories are proposed, experiments are conducted, hypotheses are tested, theories are revised and, ultimately, theories are either accepted or rejected. The story grammar story is surveyed with a view towards describing what it was, and explaining what happened to it, from the perspective of the scientific process.

(1989). Decomposing meat: a commentary on Sticklen's ‘problem-solving architecture at the knowledge level’. Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence: Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 259-262.