Generic log files and algorithms developed for educational multiplayer games

There is potential for online multiplayer educational games to play a vital role to measure cognitive and social abilities among students. Educational games can be developed to capture student responses or actions, both shared and unshared, within the game environment. This paper presents a data capturing process in online games with a focus on the structural components required to measure sufficiently. The first part of this paper introduces a suggested structure of the log files and the second part describes generic algorithms used to extract information from the log files to indicate any observable cognitive and non-cognitive processes of the students. The term generic algorithm refers the common applicability of the algorithms to log files across games and students to provide researchers with rich and meaningful data about student behaviours. A considerable number of generic algorithms were developed to extract salient student behaviour from student activity log files, including intent to achieve efficiency in both present and future development of such complex educational endeavours.