NLP for Serious Games

Introduction

The Serious Games is a blooming industry which either complements or substitutes completely the given educational methods. The IDATE (Laurent Michaud, 2010) estimates research shows that The Serious Games sector is expected to grow significantly as it currently generates 1.5 billion with an average annual growth rate of 47% between 2010 and 2015. The application of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) in the field of education in the last decade is great and very important, and there are several countries and international organisations that have started to apply it massively in classes, just like cbdf who has been applied in a wide range tryout in England.

A beneficial factor that will help this newly-growing technology is the right choosing of pedagogical design techniques and strategies which, when applied, will create an effective learning method. This kind of approach suits the style of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) because it combines the conscious and the sub-conscious learning procedure as well as the acquisition of specific skills.

Also, many researches and applications about the methods of NLP exist in American universities as well as Australian, Indian and other universities of the middle east and Europe but still, not one research about the application of this methodology in educational programs through a computer and in serious games exists in the international bibliography. (www.epistimonikomarketing.gr/telika-ti-einai-o-NLP/)

The purpose of this chapter is to study the importance and the ability to fit the neuro-linguistic programming in the design of serious games and in educational programs generally, through a cbt computer.

For the documentation of the importance and the application ability of this method we will introduce in the beginning a pedagogical documentation about the significance of using this method as well as the abilities this gives on the cbt, sg and then, in order to prove the feasibility of it, we will explain one NLP pattern modelling proposal using UML language in order to be able to fit in the design of the educational process and the lesson plans for the use of an sg. Also, we will mention the importance of the NLP methodology for the education of people with disabilities.

Generally we can say that the modelling NLP skills provide us with very accurate tools that are needed in order to understand the different range of the subjective experience of the trainee, and to find where he has answered wrong. In many cases, the only thing that is needed is the addition or the deletion of one simple step to the learning strategy of the trainee so that when the wrong stage is eliminated, learning is happening and the NLP patterns greatly help in this process through which we can find the appropriate steps in our learning strategy of the trainee.

The NLP methodology takes into account the learning type, the multisensored learning, the establishing of the objective, the auto-inducement and other very important learning factors which are significant in the development of adaptive multimedia systems for educational applications.

For the purpose of comprehension we will introduce some examples of NLP Techniques (Wikipedia) like Anchoring Reframing, as well as ways these techniques can be represented through UML diagrams, like Activity diagrams, State chart diagrams etc for the design of and sg or cbt.

Lastly, ideas for further research in the modelling of NLP techniques for more complex applications will be introduced, focusing on methods and models like the Milton model (Wikipedia) which is a hypnotherapy model based on language patterns for hypnotic communication.