Robertson & Good - AIED 2005 Adventure Author: An Authoring Tool for 3D Virtual Reality Story Construction Judy Robertson eMotion Lab Glasgow Caledonian University Judith Good Ideas Lab University of Sussex

Judith Good - AIED 2005 Story making Stories are a natural part of children’s collaborative play; Although children don’t lose their imaginations as they get older, opportunities for story making become fewer and more formal; Story making becomes story writing, which excludes children who have difficulties with text; How can we put enjoyment back into story making for older children? One approach is to broaden the range of media in which children can create stories.

Judith Good - AIED 2005 Stories and Game Creation Technology now allows children to create their own games: –build areas; –create characters; –develop plots (and explore branching plots); –write dialogue. Thus, game creation has potential in an educational context for developing story making skills; Adventure Author scaffolds the creation of stories in a 3D VR world.

Judith Good - AIED 2005 Adventure Author Development 1.Interviews with teachers, children and game designers to identify requirements of authoring tool (Good & Robertson, 2004) 2.Extensive field work to identify strengths and weaknesses of existing game authoring tools (Robertson & Good, 2004) 3.Low tech prototyping of interactive story representations (Goolnik, Robertson & Good, submitted; Good & Robertson, 2003); 4.High tech prototyping of interactive story representations 5.Expert evaluation of prototype (Robertson & Good, 2005)

Judith Good - AIED 2005 Adventure Author story structure

Judith Good - AIED 2005 Adventure Author Demo

Judith Good - AIED 2005 Learning Affordances of AA Motivation-inducing learning curve: entire area can be created with minimal effort, complexity arises in later stages (e.g. highlighting something in an area); Situated learning: children (readily) assume persona of game designer; Action-based feedback: children can observe others interact with their game; verbal feedback can augment this, but not strictly necessary; Organic reflection-revision cycle: children reflect on and revise games as a result of feedback (above); Organic collaboration: results from natural interactions, does not need to be designed into the environment or associated tasks;

Judith Good - AIED 2005 Future Work Representation of story at different levels of granularity; Dialogue as narration in addition to text (representational issue); Visual language for specifying story events; Educational scaffolding for the processes of design and reflection.

Judith Good - AIED 2005 Thank you