Date of Award

11-20-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Computer Science

First Advisor

Steven Minsker

Abstract

DOGCAT is an educational game related to an Artificial Intelligence problem, the goal of implementing it is to help kids and young people to improve their abilities in vocabulary learning in an amusing way. In the version of DOGCAT I am proposing, several enhancements to the basic game are introduced. First, the user can choose whether he/she wants to play with three or four-letter words. (The four letter version is genuinely difficult to play, and so a computerized version would be of interest to adults as well as youngsters.) Also, the user has a choice to change the cost between words dynamically. In addition, the game can introduce a hint to the user. Moreover, the user can change the dictionary by deleting or adding some words. The game also has some GUI features that make it attractive to young people. While parts of the basic DOGCAT game have occasionally been used as programming assignments in graduate AI courses (http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mccoy/courses/cisc4-681.10f/programs/prog2-search.pdf), and a limited version of DOGCAT has been implemented for iPhones (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id808583213?mt=8), my intention in is to implement an enhanced version with all of the above extra features (many of which are novel), and which can be used by both adults (for fun) and elementary school students (for vocabulary building).

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