ELLE the EndLess LEarner

An interdisciplinary digital humanities collaboration building second-language-acquisition games.

ELLE the EndLess LEarner is a collaborative project that began in late 2016. All of the ELLE games described below are connected to a user-friendly website and database. The website is designed for instructors to design custom practice modules for students—providing the instructor with the ability to create games that practice anything from a specific chapter's vocabulary to common travel phrases, to frequently confused words, and beyond. Modules and terms (including images and audio in the target language) are stored in the database and pulled into individual games when players select that module. Students create an account with a randomized username (conforming to FERPA policies), and each game uploads data from each play session to the server. This allows instructors and students alike to see their performance, time played, and frequently missed terms, helping to inform lesson plans and study habits alike.

Talking with Tito

Talking with Tito
Student teams

Original Senior Design Team (Spring 2025)

  • John Fletcher Cabrera
  • Julianne Tomlinson
  • Kylee Weener
  • Layne Mazur
  • Logan Witte
  • Tina Tran

Talking with Tito Tres Senior Design Team (Spring 2026)

  • Christian Estrada
  • Saymon Rivas
  • Sierra Huddle
  • Aneesh Vellanki
  • Zachary Trenary

ConversAItionELLE 2 Senior Design Team (Summer 2026)

  • Joshua Jarquin
  • Fedor Kudinov
  • Rodrigo Peixoto
  • Wesley Underwood

Strengthen your conversational abilities by chatting with our friendly multi-lingual parrot, Tito!

MouthfELLE

Student teams

Original Senior Design Team (2024)

  • Jason Co
  • Dylan Engle
  • Christine Fossenier
  • Michael Miller
  • Zander Preston

Senior Design Team (Spring 2026)

  • Jakson Zapata
  • Connor Reynolds
  • Ben Andrew

An Applied Linguistics game in the ELLE-plied Linguistics line, alongside Pasta Kerfuff-ELLE.

VirtuELLE Mentor

VirtuELLE Mentor card game
Student teams

Original Senior Design Team (2020)

  • Noah Corlew
  • Kalvin Miller
  • Michael Santiago

Version 2 Senior Design Team (2020)

  • Annabel Bland
  • Tyler Morejon
  • Nathan Otis
  • Daniel Rodriguez
  • Tanner Williams

ELLE Ultimate Team

  • Kalonte Jackson-Tate
  • Eugene Lucino
  • Christopher Rodbourne
  • Josh Sewnath
  • Patrick Thompson

Version 3 Senior Design Team (2022)

  • Nathan Lim
  • Justin Moy
  • Connor Lysek
  • Skylar Marosi
  • Keilvin Tran

Version 3.5 + MouthfELLE Senior Design Team (2023)

  • Jason Co
  • Dylan Engle
  • Christine Fossenier
  • Michael Miller
  • Zander Preston

Version 4 Senior Design Team (2025)

  • Zacharia Alaoui
  • Fredrick Bouloute
  • Robert Morris
  • Van Phan
  • Andy Van

Version 5 + RoyELLE Senior Design Team (Fall 2025)

  • Michael Rivera
  • Dominic Zhang
  • Ethan Jasper
  • Ashley Colegrove
  • John Michael Massung
  • Thai Do

Players match terms, phrases, or short sentences across format combinations — L2 text, L2 audio, English text, and images — earning credits for correct matches and streaks that unlock new backgrounds and card colors. The game has been used across Portuguese and linguistics courses at UCF to teach vocabulary and the International Phonetic Alphabet. A mentor avatar can prompt students with Likert-scale or open-ended questions about their confidence and understanding, with responses stored for instructors and researchers.

bELLEtro

bELLEtro
Student teams

Original Senior Design Team (Summer 2025)

  • Zacharia Alaoui
  • Fredrick Bouloute
  • Robert Morris
  • Van Phan
  • Andy Van

RoyELLE Senior Design Team (Fall 2025)

  • Michael Rivera
  • Dominic Zhang
  • Ethan Jasper
  • Ashley Colegrove
  • John Michael Massung
  • Thai Do

An Applied Linguistics learning game that combines poker and deck-building. Employ strategy and knowledge of phonemes to beat the final round!

AudibELLE (PC)

AudibELLE
Student team

Senior Design Team (Fall 2025)

  • Donny Akers
  • Austin Chenoweth
  • Cristian Flores
  • Christian Morton
  • Yasmeen Moufakkir
  • Daizabeth Nunez

Fulfill customers' spoken requests at a spooky convenience store!

hELLE's Kitchen (PC)

hELLE's Kitchen
Student team

Senior Design Team (Fall 2025)

  • Donny Akers
  • Austin Chenoweth
  • Cristian Flores
  • Christian Morton
  • Yasmeen Moufakkir
  • Daizabeth Nunez

Players enter a virtual kitchen and follow a "recipe" — sometimes literal (spaghetti), sometimes a themed vocabulary set (school supplies, golf). They locate ingredients around the kitchen and place them in a pot on the stove; incorrect items bounce back out with a thump. Once the correct set is assembled, the finished dish appears and gets served to the chefs at the window.

Spin 'N' SpELLE (PC)

Spin 'N' SpELLE
Student team

Senior Design Team (Fall 2025)

  • Donny Akers
  • Austin Chenoweth
  • Cristian Flores
  • Christian Morton
  • Yasmeen Moufakkir
  • Daizabeth Nunez

Players spell terms in the target language using alphabet blocks, adding stickers to them for accent marks and special characters.

Highrise hELLEp (PC)

Highrise hELLEp
Student team

Senior Design Team (Fall 2025)

  • Donny Akers
  • Austin Chenoweth
  • Cristian Flores
  • Christian Morton
  • Yasmeen Moufakkir
  • Daizabeth Nunez

A category sign hangs beside a burning building; random terms from the module appear on balconies. Players aim a water hose at terms matching the displayed category to put out the fire — water has no effect on a mismatched term. If a module's terms aren't labeled by category, the game falls back to translation matching against the English text on the sign.

XcELLEnt XR

XcELLEnt XR
Student team

Senior Design Team (Summer 2025)

  • Robert Marrero
  • Trong Pham
  • Daniel Moshovetis
  • Nicole Drewry

A collaborative two-player VR escape-room game teaching second-language vocabulary.

AnimELLE Crossing

AnimELLE Crossing
Student teams

Original Senior Design Team (2022)

  • Natali Siam-Pollo
  • Trevor Larson
  • Justin Reeves
  • Derek Dyer
  • Tam Nguyen

Wi-ELLE-d Words Senior Design Team (2023)

  • Michael Alfieri
  • Connor Price
  • Arwin Nimityongskul
  • Robert Bereiter

ELLEvation Senior Design Team (Spring 2025)

  • Ashton Williams
  • Anna MacInnis
  • Dylan Benson
  • Keeghan Sachs
  • Muhadeseh Ayoubi
  • Reef Holdinga
  • Zachary Kappitt

Like the Nintendo game it nods to, AnimELLE Crossing lets players explore a friendly cartoon world and complete tasks for villagers across four landscapes: forest, village, desert, and beach. Points earned can be spent on avatars, outfits, accessories, and home upgrades. Each task pulls vocabulary from the shared term database, mixing typical matching and multiple-choice formats with a beach scavenger hunt and a spelling game hosted by a wise-cracking elk.

AudibELLE (VR)

AudibELLE
Student team

Senior Design Team (2024)

  • Matthew Sand
  • Tyler Phung
  • Jesus Carballosa Arteaga
  • Liam Galloway
  • Nathaell Avril Leman

Fulfill customers' spoken requests at a spooky convenience store!

AnimELLE Crossing: CarnivELLE (PC)

Student team

Senior Design Team (2024)

  • Marc Palacio
  • Nicolas Garcia
  • Andrew Miller
  • Fletcher Morton
  • Gavin Meyer
  • M. Masia

A carnival-themed expansion of AnimELLE Crossing for PC.

cARnivELLE (mobile AR)

Student team

Senior Design Team (2024)

  • Xiaodan Xu
  • Ian Affeldt
  • Noemi Justin
  • Marcus Rosario

A mobile game played with augmented reality — the AR companion to CarnivELLE.

Pasta Kerfuff-ELLE

Pasta Kerfuff-ELLE
Student team

Senior Design Team (2024)

  • Jason Co
  • Dylan Engle
  • Christine Fossenier
  • Michael Miller
  • Zander Preston

Learn about Applied Linguistics by splitting utterances into their morphemes and beyond!

ELLE aMAZEing Game

ELLE aMAZEing Game
Student team

Senior Design Team (2023)

  • Annabel Bland
  • Tyler Morejon
  • Nathan Otis
  • Daniel Rodriguez
  • Tanner Williams

Follow the instructions to choose the correct path from a few options while learning Spanish in this immersive game!

hELLE's Kitchen (VR)

hELLE's Kitchen
Student team

Senior Design Team (2022)

  • Allexis Knight
  • Arianna Walters
  • Dylan Quigley
  • Edgard Irineo
  • Manatsa Chiomadzi

Players enter a virtual kitchen and follow a "recipe" — sometimes literal (spaghetti), sometimes a themed vocabulary set (school supplies, golf). They locate ingredients around the kitchen and place them in a pot on the stove; incorrect items bounce back out with a thump. Once the correct set is assembled, the finished dish appears and gets served to the chefs at the window.

Milleni-ELLE

Milleni-ELLE
Student team

Senior Design Team (2022)

  • Allexis Knight
  • Arianna Walters
  • Dylan Quigley
  • Edgard Irineo
  • Manatsa Chiomadzi
  • N. Yardich

A Spanish-language game built around context and immersion. Players arrive at an airport tutorial scene, then board a virtual bus that takes them to a house to pack for a trip or to a grocery store to practice food vocabulary.

ELLE BetterRacer

ELLE BetterRacer
Student teams

ELLE BetterRacer 2 Senior Design Team (2021)

  • F. Franco
  • B. Checchia
  • J. Pace
  • J. Gonzalez

ELLE BetterRacer Senior Design Team (2020)

A mobile racing game built on the ELLE platform.

Spin 'N' SpELLE (VR)

Spin 'N' SpELLE
Student team

ELLE-ments of Learning Senior Design Team (2020)

  • Kaarthik Alagappan
  • Jonathan Jules
  • Tiffany Lin
  • Catalina Morales
  • Samuel Tungol

Players hold magic wands in both hands — built for accessibility and for both left- and right-handed play — to summon, rotate, and place letter blocks on a shelf beside an image of the term they're spelling. Accent marks are added with animal-themed stickers. A completed word and its shelf vanish in a puff of purple smoke. Players can spell endlessly or take a quiz mode that asks for each term once.

Highrise hELLEp (VR)

Highrise hELLEp
Student team

ELLE-ments of Learning Senior Design Team (2020)

  • Kaarthik Alagappan
  • Jonathan Jules
  • Tiffany Lin
  • Catalina Morales
  • Samuel Tungol

A category sign hangs beside a burning building; random terms from the module appear on balconies. Players aim a water hose at terms matching the displayed category to put out the fire — water has no effect on a mismatched term. If a module's terms aren't labeled by category, the game falls back to translation matching against the English text on the sign.

ELLE 2.0

ELLE 2.0
Student team

Senior Design Team (2019)

  • Mark Behler
  • Phillio Da Silva
  • Ian Holdeman
  • Santiago Perez Arrubla

ELLE Mobile

ELLE for mobile
Student team
  • Christian Acosta – Database Developer
  • Kyle Hendricks – Android Developer
  • James Jachcinski – iOS Developer
  • Mustapha Moore – Website Developer
  • Dominic Rama – Android Developer

ELLE AR

ELLE for augmented reality
Student team
  • Christian Acosta – Database Developer
  • Kyle Hendricks – Android Developer
  • James Jachcinski – iOS Developer
  • Mustapha Moore – Website Developer
  • Dominic Rama – Android Developer

ELLE Speak Your Mind

Student team
  • Jonah Dearth – Lead Game Designer
  • Timothy Sandburg – Level Designer
  • Dexavier Chang – 3D Modeler, Designer
  • Allyson Foley – 3D Artist
  • Isaac Dunaevschi – Lead Programmer
  • Sunny Mallard – 3D Modeler

ELLE 1.0

ELLE 1.0
Student team

Senior Design Team (2017)

  • Georg Anemogiannis
  • Eric Butt
  • Tyler Chauhan
  • Megan Chipman

The original ELLE the EndLess LEarner — the endless-runner-style vocabulary game that started it all.

Research Support

  • International Research and Studies Program, US Department of Education. Exploring Language Learning with Educational Computer and VR Games. 10/2023–9/2026. $295,582. Role: PI.
  • UCF Tech Fee Grant: $6,458.75 (2020–2021)
  • UCF Quality Enhancement Grant: $3,500 (2018–2020)

Publications & Presentations

AECT 2025

Kong, Y. and Johnson, E.K. (2025). The Future of Language Learning is Fun: Gaming Behaviors and Preferences of L2 Students. Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) International Convention. Las Vegas, NV. October 20, 2025.

iLRN 2025

Kong, Y. and Johnson, E.K. (2025). Virtu-ELLE Vocabulary: Evaluating Three Second Language Acquisition VR Games. 11th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN).

Florida Innovation Summit 2025

Johnson, E.K., Vitanova, G., Sousa, S., Pegoraro, E., and Núñez, L. (2025). Play Your Homework! Motivating Vocabulary Practice with Video Games. Florida Innovation Summit. Orlando, FL. April 10, 2025.

Modern Languages Lunch and Learn 2025

Johnson, E.K., Vitanova, G., Sousa, S., Pegoraro, E., and Núñez, L. (2025). ELLE the Endless Learner: Vocabulary Practice with Video Games. Modern Languages Lunch and Learn. March 28, 2025.

iLRN 2024

Kong, Y. and Johnson, E.K. (2024). Work-in-Progress—Cozy Games for Learning: Vocabulary Practice with Anim-ELLE Crossing. 10th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN).

UCF Digital Learning Day 2024

Johnson, E.K., Vitanova, G., Sousa, S., and Pegoraro, E. (2024). Vocabulary Practice with Video Games: ELLE the EndLess LEarner. UCF Digital Learning Day. September 24, 2024.

SIGDOC 2023

Johnson, E.K. and Vitanova, G. (2023). "You Have to Play Your Homework!": An Analysis of Student Reflections on an Educational Computer Game. 42nd ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC '23). Orlando, FL. October 26, 2023.

iGBL 2023

Johnson, E.K. (2023). Designing Engaging Vocabulary Practice in VR With hELLE's Kitchen. Irish Conference on Game-Based Learning. June 28, 2023.

Language Teacher Development in Digital Contexts 2022

Vitanova, G., Johnson, E.K., Sousa, S., Giroux, A., and Merritt, D. (2022). Gameful Teaching: Exploring Language Teacher Identity and Agency through Videogames. In Language Teacher Development in Digital Contexts. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

iLRN 2021

Johnson, E.K. (2021). ELLE-ments of Learning: A Framework for Analyzing Multimodal Technical Communication Strategies in an Educational VR Game. Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN) Conference. June 5, 2021.

iGBL 2021

Johnson, E.K., Vitanova, G., and Giroux, A.L. (2021). Learning Phonetics the "Easy Way": Student Reflections of a PC Vocabulary Learning Game. Irish Conference on Game-Based Learning 2021. June 24, 2021.

SECOLLF Selected Proceedings 2021

Johnson, E.K. and Vitanova, G. (2021). Agency and Gaming in Language Learning. In Work and Labor in World Languages, Literatures, and Film: Selected Proceedings of the 24th Southeast Conference on Languages, Literatures, and Film. Brown-Walker Press.

Journal of Universal Computer Science 2020

Johnson, E.K., Giroux, A.L., Merritt, D., Vitanova, G., Sousa, S. (2020). Assessing the Impact of Game Modalities in Second Language Acquisition: ELLE the EndLess LEarner. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 26(8), 880-903.

iLRN 2020

Johnson, E.K., Giroux, A.L., and Piñeda, Y. (2020). Work-in-Progress: Context is Key in Immersive Learning Environments. Proceedings of 2020 6th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN), IEEE, 320-323.

Southeast Conference 2020

Vitanova, G. and Johnson, E.K. (2020). Agency and Gaming in Language Learning. 24th Southeast Conference for Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Film. St. Petersburg, FL. March 6, 2020.

AR/VR Innovation Discovery Event (AVID) 2020

Johnson, E.K. (2020). ELLE: The EndLess LEarner. UCF AR VR Innovation Discovery Event (AVID). UCF Downtown Campus, February 28, 2020.

UCF Downtown Campus Maker Space Grand Opening 2020

Johnson, E.K. (2020). ELLE: The EndLess LEarner. UCF Downtown Maker Space Grand Opening, November 15, 2020.

HCII 2019

Johnson, E.K., Merritt, D., and Giroux, A. (2019). Learning Portuguese in VR with ELLE. Human-Computer Interaction International Conference. July 29-31, 2019. Orlando, Florida.

iGBL 2019

Johnson, E.K. and Giroux, A.L. (2019). Effective ELLE-ments: Learner Preferences in Learning Game Features And Mechanics. Irish Conference on Game-Based Learning. June 26-28, 2019. Cork City, Ireland.

Otronicon 2019

Johnson, E., Giroux, A.L., Merritt, D., Vitanova, G., and Sousa, S. (2018). ELLE the EndLess LEarner: Language Learning Videogame. (O)rlando Elec(tron)ic (I)nteractive Entertainment (Con)vention. January 18-19, 2019. Orlando Science Center, Orlando, Florida. [ELLE 2.0 VR]

iLRN 2018

Johnson, E., Giroux, A. L., and Merritt, D. (2018). ELLE the EndLess LEarner: A Second Language Acquisition Virtual Reality Game. Demonstration. Proceedings from Immersive Learning Research Network Conference, Missoula, Montana, June 24-29, 2018. Graz University of Technology (Austria). [ELLE 1.0 VR]

DH 2017

Merritt, D. F., Johnson, E. K., Giroux, A. L. (2017). ELLE the EndLess LEarner: Exploring Second Language Acquisition Through an Endless Runner-style Video Game. Paper presented by A. Giroux at Digital Humanities 2017 in Montreal, Canada, August 9, 2017. [ELLE 1.0 VR & PC]

HASTAC 2017

Giroux, A.L., Johnson, E.K., Merritt, D., Vitanova, G., Sousa, S. ELLE, The EndLess LEarner Videogame: An interdisciplinary digital humanities collaboration. Presented by all authors at Humanities Arts Science Technology Alliance Consortium (HASTAC), Orlando, Florida, November 2-4, 2017. [ELLE 1.0 VR & PC]

Anemogiannis, G., Butt, E., Chauhan, T., & Chipman, M. ELLE, The EndLess LEarner Videogame: Language Acquisition Through Interactive Technology. Demonstration at Humanities Arts Science Technology Alliance Consortium (HASTAC), Orlando, Florida, November 2-4, 2017. [ELLE 1.0 VR & PC]

College of Engineering and Computer Science Fall 2017 Senior Design Showcase

Anemogiannis, G., Butt, E., Chauhan, T., & Chipman, M. ELLE (EndLess LEarner): Learn a Second Language with Virtual Reality Video Game. Presented at UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science Fall 2017 Senior Design Showcase November 30, 2017. *Awarded Best Computer Science Project [ELLE 1.0 VR & PC].