Cloisonné Serious Game: AI Cognitive Apprenticeship Instructor for Intangible Cultural Learning

Abstract

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is the living skills, knowledge, and practices that communities pass down across generations, such as traditional craftsmanship including cloisonné. Cloisonné is a centuries old Chinese metal and enamel handcraft, in which colored enamel is fired within copper wire compartments on a metal body. This handcraft faces growing challenges in preservation and education, creating a need for digital approaches that can effectively engage younger generations. However, serious games built around such crafts often face two key limitations. First, many incorporate ICH only as decorative content or limited-time events, rather than embedding craft knowledge and cultural meaning into gameplay systems. Second, heritage education games often rely on static, encyclopedic text, which can weaken immersion and reduce players' motivation to learn about the craft's historical and cultural context. To address this gap, this study explores the educational and experiential impact of an AI-driven "master artist" in a cloisonné serious game, compared with a traditional static-text condition. The design is informed by cognitive apprenticeship and the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S–O–R) framework. Within the game, generative AI functions as a context-sensitive instructor that simulates an apprenticeship process by delivering cloisonné terminology, historical framing, and performance-based guidance during play. A between-subjects pilot study (N = 12, n = 6 per condition) was conducted, supplemented by a domain expert evaluation. Short-term knowledge retention was similar across conditions, but the AI condition produced stronger experiential outcomes—higher perceived social presence, a greater sense of actively learning a craft, and stronger cultural identification with cloisonné—and the domain expert confirmed the cultural authenticity of the AI-generated content. These findings suggest that the value of generative AI in heritage-focused serious games may lie less in immediate content mastery than in its role as an apprenticeship scaffold that enhances engagement, guides learning, and fosters cultural resonance, with implications for AI-supported heritage education, digital craft education, and interactive museum learning.