Abstract: Modern technology enhanced learning methods approach more and more non-traditional instructional paradigms. Game based learning is probably the most promising one of them thanks to its high immersion, motivational power and potential for efficient teaching. In last decade, the interest in game-based learning has grown incredibly - on one hand, fueled by successful professional training by games and simulations in many industrial and military domains and, as well, encouraged by recent research and field trials proving the cognitive benefits of playing educational games. Pupils, students and adults learn from computer games in an informal way while playing them alone and/or collectively. Unlike traditional education, here learners acquire knowledge and practical skills in game domain by pursuing a goal in given context by choosing appropriate actions and taking the risk of their consequences. Educational games offer virtual environments closed to real life and facilitate learning by practice and mistakes. Thus, they keep learners motivated in acquiring skills and knowledge and engaging them by practicing in situations closed to real life.
Game-based learning represents a branch of serious games which relies on game play for increasing learning outcomes by retaining knowledge and skills and applying them to the real world. It has started by simple non-digital games and evolved highly by applying computer games in educational context. The talk will reveal possible types of educational computer games, from simple single-user games up to complex, collaborative social multiplayer games. It is going to bring results of many surveys about efficiency of practical field trials of applying these types of educational games.
Mass invasion of educational games worldwide is still not possible due to the lack of cheap and effective implementations of e-learning games of various types making use of domain content of given course. For streamline usage of educational games in future technology enhanced learning, teachers need software tools and frameworks for an effective game construction using course content of particular domain. The talk will explain how semantic structuring of educational content might facilitate its usage in game design and may help rapid and more facile creation of games appropriate for e-learning purposes.
Finally, the talk will refer to some important aspects of educational games development such as usage of intelligent agents participating games as tutors, collaborators and opponents. Agents are very promising in embodying innovative strategies for courseware presentation and various interdisciplinary approaches dealing with complexity. There will be shown how intelligent agents may act alone or in cooperative mode in adaptive way by extracting cognitive, affective, learning/gaming style and social characteristics of individual learner.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Boyan Bontchev has obtained MSc degree in Computer Engineering in 1988 at Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and PhD degree in Parallel Processing at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) in 1993. During his PhD study, he has specialized in RWTH, Aachen and University of Vienna. Between 1993 and 2000, Dr. Bontchev has been researcher at BAS in the area of dataflow models and architectures and, at the same time, followed a career of software engineer and consultant within the OBLOG project initiated by CERN. He has acted as project manager at many private entities in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Bulgaria. Since 2001 he runs as managing director of Bonea Ltd, and since 2003 he is Associate Professor at Dep. of Software Engineering at Sofia University. He has participated in many research and industrial projects, both national and in the scope of EC FP5/6/7. Currently, he is project coordinator of the ADOPTA project dealing with adaptive e-learning platforms for edutainment and game based learning. Dr. Bontchev is author of more than 90 scientific publications and runs as invited speaker at European conferences and PhD schools.