Serious Games and Affective Learning

Interactive systems that support learning through emotion, engagement, and meaningful experience

Serious Games and Affective Learning

This research investigates serious games and interactive learning environments that integrate emotional, motivational, and social factors into the learning process.

The work examines how narrative, virtual environments, embodied agents, feedback, and adaptive interaction can support learner engagement, reflection, knowledge acquisition, and behavior change.

Research Topics

  • Affective learning
  • Serious games for education and training
  • Emotion-aware learning environments
  • Narrative and interactive storytelling
  • Embodied agents for learning support
  • Virtual and mixed reality for education
  • Motivation, engagement, and behavior change
  • Cross-cultural learning experiences

Research Approach

Interactive systems are designed and evaluated with learners in order to examine how emotional experience and system behavior influence engagement, understanding, and learning outcomes.

The research combines system development, behavioral observation, questionnaires, interviews, and physiological sensing when appropriate.

Representative Publications and Awards

  • Kaoru Sumi (Ed.). Affective Learning and Serious Games. CRC Press / Taylor & Francis, 2026. DOI: 10.1201/9781003782735

  • Kaoru Sumi and Shusuke Sato. Experiences of Game-Based Learning and Reviewing History of the Experience Using Player’s Emotions. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 5, 2022. DOI: 10.3389/frai.2022.874106

  • Ryoma Tanabe and Kaoru Sumi. Empathy-Driven Persuasion: A Serious Game for Anti-Bullying Education via First-Person Perpetrator Experience. In Persuasive Technology: PERSUASIVE 2025 Satellite Events, Springer, 2025. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-97177-8_4

  • Thomas James Z. Tiam-Lee and Kaoru Sumi. Analysis and Prediction of Student Emotions while Doing Programming Exercises. In Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS 2019), Springer, 2019. Best Full Paper Award

  • Shusuke Sato and Kaoru Sumi. A Serious Game for Reviewing Learning History with Players’ Emotions. International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE 2020), 2020. Best Technical Paper Award