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

--> Computer Science > Human-Computer Interaction arXiv:2603.03644 [Submitted on 4 Mar 2026] Title: Bridging Pedagogy and Play: Introducing a Language Mapping Interface for Human-AI Co-Creation in Educational Game Design Authors: Daijin Yang , Erica Kleinman , Casper Harteveld View a PDF of the paper titled Bridging Pedagogy and Play: Introducing a Language Mapping Interface for Human-AI Co-Creation in Educational Game Design, by Daijin Yang and 2 other authors View PDF 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. Comments: Accepted for CHI EA 26 Subjects: Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) ; Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) Cite as: arXiv:2603.03644 [cs.HC] (or arXiv:2603.03644v1 [cs.HC] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.03644 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Related DOI : https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3798862 Focus to learn more DOI linking to related resources Submission history From: Daijin Yang [ view email ] [v1]...