Scope of the problem (parents) - ECIRCUS - EU Framework VI Project - Education through Characters with emotional-Intelligence and Role-playing Capabilities that Understand Social interaction

eCIRCUS (Education through characters with emotional intelligence and role playing capabilities that understand social interaction) intends to further develop the FearNot! technology and carry out on a number of large-scale longitudinal psychological evaluations in schools using both the FearNot! software and the purpose built ORIENT software to be developed in the course of the project.

VICTEC (Virtual ICT with Empathic Characters) a European framework V project was carried out between 2002-2005.
The project considered the application of 3D animated synthetic characters and emergent narrative to create improvised dramas to address bullying problems for children aged 8-12 in the UK, Germany and Portugal. Like VICTEC, eCIRCUS is to support social and emotional learning through role-play and affective engagement for Personal and Social Health Education (PSHE) involving complex social situations.

Synthetic characters: A synthetic character is an autonomous character driven by an intelligent architecture whose interactions are not pre-scripted.

Emergent narrative: Emergent narrative builds upon the model of improvisational drama rather than authored stories: an initial situation and characters with well defined personalities and roles produces an unscripted interaction driven by real-time choices.

ORIENT

The ORIENT demonstrator is in the area of integration of refugee/immigrant children in schools. In this application, role-playing characters interact with child users in a number of different ways so as to create inter-cultural empathy.

The ORIENT software will provide a role-play and story-framework for virtual actors. It will incorporate actors-with-attitude with interaction supported through the interaction modalities developed in the eCIRCUS project. The novel models and original architecture that have emerged from the results, recommendations and developments of the FEARNOT! software will be technologically evaluated.

This evaluation will be achieved through a range of approaches including the use of a ‘trailer’ prototype that is to be used as part of a user-centred design approach, evaluative questionnaires and school based evaluation.

This domain has been chosen for the following reasons:

1. It is a highly significant educational area for which there are currently limited digital materials

2. It allows the investigation of empathy-creation where there is a lack of perceived similarity between users and characters

3. It is an educationally relevant issue that will target children in the 13-14 year old age bracket.

Aims of the project

eCIRCUS will develop a new approach in the use of ICT to support social and emotional learning within Personal and Social Health Education (PSHE).

This will be achieved through virtual role-play with synthetic characters that establish credible and empathic relations with the learners. To attain this, eCIRCUS investigates educational role-play using autonomous synthetic characters and involving the child through affective engagement, including the use of standard and highly innovative interaction mechanisms.

This project will develop novel conceptual models and innovative technology to support learning through role-play and affective engagement for Personal and Social Health Education (PSHE) involving complex social situations. It will do this by taking modern theories of narrative and role-play from psychology and implementing them in affectively driven autonomous graphically embodied agents – actors with attitude.

The dissemination of results from this project could have a significant impact on approaches to social and emotional learning; improving quality and innovation in learning technologies; determining approaches to combat bullying and support conflict resolution; and potentially improving the quality of life in European schools.