AI-Generated Interactive Fiction for Educational Use: A Pilot Study of Perceived Comprehensibility, Coherence, and Engagement

Synthesis: This pilot study (N = 22 STEM higher-education students) evaluates AI-generated interactive fiction as an educational medium. Narrative clarity and length acceptance rated positively, engagement hovered near neutral, and story-content coherence was the weakest dimension — with quiz integration emerging as the main usability bottleneck. The authors derive concrete design implications for interactive, narrative learning experiences.

Key Findings

1. Generation is not enough. Generative AI can produce interactive narrative content at scale, but scenarios that are confusing, narratively inconsistent, or unengaging are unlikely to be useful in practice — quality must be validated with users, not assumed.

2. Mixed user ratings. Participants rated narrative clarity and length acceptance positively, engagement sat near the neutral midpoint, and story-content coherence was the weakest dimension by a clear margin.

3. Quiz integration is the bottleneck. Qualitative feedback identified artificial in-fiction motivation for quiz prompts, abrupt setting changes, and the absence of story-level consequences for wrong answers as the main friction points.

Implications

For Generative AI-driven AI Tutoring and narrative Curriculum Design, the study suggests that scaffolding learning checks (quizzes) into interactive stories requires more than inserting questions — the story must motivate and respond to them coherently. This bears on Student Experience and Engagement Metrics: perceived coherence appears to be the limiting factor for sustained engagement with AI-produced narrative content.

The work connects to broader efforts to make AI-generated instructional media usable, including AI-generated videos and slides in computing education, and to Educational NLP research on automated content generation. As a pilot with a small sample, it is a design-oriented contribution that motivates larger follow-ups on learning effectiveness rather than an efficacy study in itself.

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Citation

Rogosch, F., & Schrader, A. (2026). AI-Generated Interactive Fiction for Educational Use: A Pilot Study of Perceived Comprehensibility, Coherence, and Engagement. EDULEARN26 Proceedings, Article 1075.