Teaching STEM through a role-playing serious game and intelligent pedagogical agents

Teaching STEM is a promising application domain for game-based instructional methods. In this paper we present a serious game organized as a role playing game: players learn how to inhabit the headspace of someone other than their primary ego identity, offering them the chance to develop a stronger sense of empathy. The same empathy is established between the player and her Intelligent Pedagogical Agent, which should guide the player into the Virtual Learning Environment and trough the game as well. We present the ongoing development of the game, and a preliminary validation of the Intelligent Pedagogical Agent to show its effectiveness with teenager students.