Bridging Pedagogy and Play: Introducing a Language Mapping Interface for Human-AI Co-Creation in Educational Game Design

TL;DR

This paper introduces a web-based language mapping interface that facilitates human-AI collaboration in educational game design by making pedagogical intent explicit and editable, aiming to lower barriers for non-experts.

Contribution

It presents a novel natural language framework-based tool that enables explicit mapping of pedagogy to gameplay through collaborative development with an LLM assistant.

Findings

Enhances transparency in AI-assisted game design

Empowers non-expert educators to craft educational games

Supports reflection and alignment of pedagogy and gameplay

Abstract

Educational games can foster critical thinking, problem-solving, and motivation, yet instructors often find it difficult to design games that reliably achieve specific learning outcomes. Existing authoring environments reduce the need for programming expertise, but they do not eliminate the underlying challenges of educational game design, and they can leave non-expert designers reliant on opaque suggestions from AI systems. We designed a controlled natural language framework-based web tool that positions language as the primary interface for LLM-assisted educational game design. In the tool, users and an LLM assistant collaboratively develop a structured language that maps pedagogy to gameplay through four linked components. We argue that, by making pedagogical intent explicit and editable in the interface, the tool has the potential to lower design barriers for non-expert designers, preserves human agency in critical decisions, and enables alignment and reflections between pedagogy and gameplay during and after co-creation.