Lynne Hall

Abstract: This paper presents a collaborative initiative within the North East of England which aims to grow and sustain a software industry, based on the strengths of regional players, including in particular the local university. The project Sunderland Software City has the ambitious aim of developing the people, the infrastructure and the business and enterprise culture to create and sustain a software industry within the North East. This paper focuses upon the role which the University of Sunderland plays within the project, and presents and reflects upon the model of knowledge exchange used. We also outline early results achieved and significant successes to date. Conclusions are drawn and comments made on the future directions of the project.

Abstract: Bullying is widespread in European schools, despite multiple intervention strategies having been proposed over the years. The present study investigates the effects of a novel virtual learning strategy (�FearNot!�) to tackle bullying in both UK and German samples. The approach is intended primarily for victims to increase their coping skills and further to heighten empathy and defence of victims by non-involved bystanders. This paper focuses on the defender role. Applying quantitative as well as qualitative methodology, the present study found that �FearNot!� helped non-involved children to become defenders in the German sub-sample while it had no such effect in the UK sub-sample. German �New Defenders� (children who are initially uninvolved but are nominated as defenders by their peers after the intervention period) were found to be significantly more popular at baseline, and to show more cognitive empathy (Theory of Mind) for the virtual victims as compared to permanently non-involved pupils. Moreover, gender interacts with becoming a defender in its effects on affective empathy, with emotional contagion being particularly associated with New Defender status among girls. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research on antibullying intervention strategies and cultural differences in bullying prevalence rates and intervention outcomes.

Abstract: Anti-bullying interventions to date have shown limited success in reducing victimization and have rarely been evaluated using a controlled trial design. This study examined the effects of the FearNot! anti-bullying virtual learning intervention on escaping victimization, and reducing overall victimization rates among primary school students using a nonrandomized controlled trial design. The program was designed to enhance the coping skills of children who are known to be, or are likely to be, victimized.

Abstract: Theory of mind (ToM) methods were used to investigate children�s interpretations of the social and emotional states of synthetic pedagogical characters, focusing on children�s cognitive and affective empathic responses to characters in bullying scenarios and their social awareness and understanding of the characters� situations. Although cognitive approaches typically do not consider user social awareness and emotional understanding and their roles in interaction, this is critical for our research on empathic engagement. We present a novel approach focusing on story and character comprehension using concepts from ToM methods to understand children�s interpretations of characters within virtual role play scenarios and compare these with an adult perspective. Our results identify that ToM methods offer considerable potential for determining user social awareness and emotional understanding, particularly highlighting that adults and children have different perspectives on how victims and bullies feel.

Abstract: Objectives: Bullying is a form of systematic abuse by peers with often serious consequences for victims. Few studies have considered the role of emotion recognition abilities and empathic behaviour for different bullying roles. This study investigated physical and relational bullying involvement in relation to basic emotion recognition abilities, and empathic styles in children. Using the framework of the Social Information Processing model, it was expected that victims would have poor emotion recognition abilities, and that bullies would demonstrate low levels of empathy. Methods: Data was collected from UK children (N = 373) aged 9-11 years who completed a bullying instrument, the Bryant Index of Empathy measurement, and the DANVA (Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy) to assess emotion recognition abilities. Children were classified into physical and relational bullying roles (bully, victim, bully/victim neutral) for analytical purposes. Results: While physical victims, bullies and neutrals differed little in their emotion recognition abilities, relational victims were particularly poor in recognising negative emotions of anger and fear in faces. No differences were found in empathy scores, according to bullying roles. Conclusions: Children who are relationally victimised are poorer in understanding emotional information than bullies and non-involved children. In light of previous research that victims of bullying more frequently experience child abuse, future interventions should consider the importance of emotion and social skills training for these vulnerable children.

Abstract: Addressing the problems of bullying in schools, this paper presents a novel and highly innovative pedagogical approach, building on the immersive power of virtual role-play. Educational role-play is widely accepted as a powerful instrument to change attitudes and behaviour, but faces some difficulties and disadvantages when applied to sensitive social issues in the classroom. This paper shows how the FearNot! software application, developed within the scope of the EU-funded projects VICTEC (Virtual ICT with Empathic Characters) and eCIRCUS (Education through Characters with emotional-Intelligence and Role-playing Capabilities that Understand Social interaction) uses virtual role-play and autonomous agents to provide children aged eight to eleven years of age with the opportunity to visit a virtual school environment populated by 3D animated synthetic characters that engage in bullying episodes. The characters� actions and the storyline are created as improvised dramas by use of emergent narrative, resulting in unscripted and highly believable interaction experiences for the learner. While the students are spectators to the bullying episodes that unfold among the FearNot! characters, the victimised character starts a conversation with the student in between the episodes, describing their experiences with bullying and how they feel as a result to it, and asking the student for advice. The aim of this approach and particularly of this interaction sequence in between the virtual bullying episodes is to sensitise primary school students to the potential problems that victims of persistent aggressive behaviour are facing: By triggering an empathic relationship between learners and characters, learners understand and vicariously feel into the plight of the victimised character. Empirical evidence from bullying research implies that bullies are regularly reinforced by bystanders that witness the bullying and turn their attention to it, but do not actively intervene to end it (Craig & Pepler 1996; Lean 1998; Salmivalli 1999; Hawkins et al. 2001). Hence, this intervention strategy targets these bystanders to stand up to the bully and help the victim, due to their heightened awareness and sensitivity to the grave consequences victims face. Preliminary evaluation results indicate that the children were willing to immerse themselves in the virtual drama and that they empathically engage with the characters, attributing a range of emotions to the characters depending on the events that happen within the respective scenario. An ongoing long-term intervention in school in the UK and Germany covers several interactions with the software over a ten week period of time.

Abstract: This paper considers the impact of gender on the design of animated agents that aim to evoke empathy and to encourage children to explore issues related to bullying. High fidelity storyboards containing bullying scenarios were presented to 80 ten year old children from two schools. Children individually completed a questionnaire that focused on amongst other things the empathic relationship between the child and the characters in the storyboard. Results indicate significant differences between the genders, with greater levels of empathy and comprehension achieved when characters are of the same gender as the child. This has considerable implications for the design of animated characters for bullying scenarios, requiring that the gender of the child is taken into account when designing animated characters and the scenarios they participate in.

Abstract: The paper presents requirements for the design of unscripted (emergent) dramas based on research into role-playing games. It considers the FearNot! demonstrator in antibullying education as a sample implementation, describing the architecture of its affectively driven intelligent autonomous characters. It presents a comparative evaluation of the unscripted version against an earlier scripted version, examines related work and further development of the emergent narrative approach.

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the simulation of human-like capabilities in synthetic characters within the domain of Personal and Social Education. Our aim was to achieve socially meaningful and engaging interactions with children in the 8-12 age group to enable an exploration of bullying and coping strategies. In this paper, we consider the engagement between the interacting partners, focusing particularly on the affective and empathic aspects of this relationship. We have used Theory of Mind to enable us to evaluate children�s understanding of social scenarios and the thinking of others. The results from this 345 children study highlight that children are able to recognise and interpret affect in synthetic characters and are empathically engaged with the characters in the scenarios.

Abstract: This paper presents FearNot, a virtual learning environment populated by synthetic characters interacting in bullying scenarios, aimed at 8-12 year old children. FearNot was designed within the VICTEC project where a key aim was to ensure that children participated in the design process. A range of techniques were used to gain children�s input. This paper discusses the various techniques used within VICTEC and highlights some key examples of the results gained by using such techniques, challenges encountered, and the design implications.

Abstract: Virtual environments are now becoming a promising new technology to be used in the development of interactive learning environments for children. Perhaps triggered by the success of computer games, VEs are now seen as an emergent and engaging new way by which children learn experimental sciences and other disciplines. Inhabiting these IVEs there can be agents or intelligent characters, that are responsible for events that happen in the environment and make it not redictive or completely controlled. However, to build such environments, in particular if populated by synthetic characters, one needs to carefully address the problem of how do the learners respond to the characters in the virtual environment. Do learners like the characters? Do learners identify themselves with characters in virtual environments? This relation between learners and characters in virtual environments can be studied in several perspectives. In this paper, we will focus primarily on the issue of empathy as one desirable aspect of the affective interaction between learners and synthetic characters. In particular we will defend that in order for such affective relations to happen, characters should be created and designed taking into account what we call the proximity factor. This is based on the fact that children are found to respond more empathically to those that are perceived as similar to the self than those who are perceived as dissimilar [2]. This appears to be the case when similarity is defined in terms of a shared characteristic, such as sex [6], race or in terms of shared personal experiences [2]. Thus, designing characters aiming at pedagogical empathic interactions, we should careful address how close the learner will feel with the synthetic characters developed both in terms of situation, behaviour or even physical appearance. In order to illustrate this factor in eliciting emotional reactions to synthetic characters, we will present a specific system called FearNot!. FearNot! was developed to address the difficult and often devastating problem of bullying in schools. By using role playing and synthetic characters in a 3D environment, FearNot! allows children from 8 to 12 to experience a virtual scenario where they can witness (in a third-person perspective) bullying situations. To build empathy into FearNot! we have considered the following components: agent�s architecture; the characters� embodiment; the environment itself and emotionally charged situations. All these elements were build to allow for a stronger proximity with the user and the system. In this paper we will focus primarily on this problem and report some results achieved in the evaluation done with 127 children and 95 adults on the system.

Abstract: The mobile device market offers considerable potential for software products, however, currently there are few compelling applications for hand-helds. We identify the potential for mobile intelligent systems and briefly describe the software that we have developed to enable mobile intelligent system construction. We outline the requirements for a mobile intelligent system for the corporate sector and discuss our attempts to create a demonstrator. The demonstrator is evaluated with some success. Future work is briefly discussed.

Abstract: Role-play can be a powerful educational tool, especially when dealing with social or ethical issues. However while other types of education activity have been routinely technology-enhanced for some time, the specific problems of supporting educational role-play with technology have only begun to be tackled recently. Within the eCIRCUS project we have designed a framework for technology-enhanced role-play with the aim of educating adolescents about intercultural empathy. This work was influenced by related fields such as intelligent virtual agents, interactive narrative and pervasive games. In this paper we will describe the different components of our role-play technology by means of a prototype implementation of this technology, the ORIENT showcase. Furthermore we will present some preliminary results of our first evaluation trials of ORIENT.

Abstract: Empathic interaction with synthetic characters enables users to build and maintain an emotional involvement that can result in stimulating novel interactions. Many factors impact on empathic interaction; here we focus on the role of �similarity� in developing empathic relations. Evidence suggests that if a character is perceived as being similar to the user in appearance and behaviour, then greater empathic relations will emerge. To investigate this, 345 children aged 10-11 years interacted with FearNot (Fun with Empathic Agents to Reach Novel Outcomes in Teaching), a virtual world populated by synthetic characters involved in bullying scenarios. Children completed an Agent Evaluation Questionnaire, which enquired about perceptions of similarity and empathy with the characters. Results indicated that if children perceived that they were similar to the synthetic characters, greater empathy and liking was expressed. The implications for future design of synthetic characters are considered.

Abstract: In the 21st Century the contemporary experience of the citizen is to live and work alongside many cultural, ethnic and religious groups, however cultural differences can lead to social stresses and sometimes outright conflict. Helping children and young people to develop empathy for people from other cultures is therefore an ever pressing pedagogical imperative. Role play and case studies which support experiential learning have been shown to be highly effective in this domain, however they are difficult to organise and costly. The 7th Framework EU project �Education for Cultural Understanding Technology Enhanced� (eCute) aims to develop cultural understanding by providing immersive virtual role play with intelligent interactive graphical characters embodying models of culturally-specific behaviour and interaction. Targeted at two specific age groups, children aged 9-11 and young adults aged 18-25, eCute sets out to design and build two cultural Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) based on virtual dramas and to evaluate these with stakeholder teacher and learner groups to demonstrate learning efficacy. The realisation of these highly innovative technology enhanced learning experiences for children and young people requires an interdisciplinary approach that brings together psychologists, educationalists, cultural theorists and a range of design and technology practitioners to address the key design issues involved. Opportunities for children and young people to explore cultural difference and what this means through technology enhanced role play activities is of considerable benefit in today�s multicultural contexts and for the societies we hope for in the future. This paper will explore the interdisciplinary approach needed to develop these application and in particular the overarching theoretical framework which will underpin design, development and evaluation of these highly innovative learning experiences.

Abstract: This paper discusses the development of a believable agent-based educational application designed to develop inter-cultural empathy for 13-14 year old students. It considers relevant work in cultural taxonomy and adaptation to other cultures as well as work showing that users are sensitive to the perceived culture of believable interactive characters. It discusses how an existing affective agent architecture was developed to model culturallyspecific agent behaviour. Finally, it considers the role of interaction modalities in supporting an empathic engagement with culturally-specific characters.

Abstract: Using synthetic characters to support children�s personal, social and emotional education requires that the emotional response elicited from the children is that desired by educators and stakeholders. This paper discusses an approach to understanding children�s emotional interpretation of character�s behaviour in a complex social situation. We outline this approach based on Theory of Mind concepts, that we have developed to enable us to understand and analyse children�s emotional interpretation of synthetic characters involved in bullying scenarios in a virtual school. We discuss an empirical study of 345 children, aged 8-11 years, and concluded that our approach enabled us to gain a greater understanding of children�s emotional interpretations. Results from the study identified that overall children did make appropriate emotional interpretations of characters and story, highlighting the potential of synthetic characters for exploring personal, social and emotional issues.

Abstract: This paper reports on a case study of a participatory technique that focuses on gathering contextual information from users to assist the analysis and design process. It presents a participatory methodology based upon a photo-elicitation approach combined with Lomo photography practices and group-centric analysis aimed at children and teenagers in order to draw together design requirements specifically for them. The paper discusses the use of this approach for designing a multimedia learning application on water safety aimed at 11-13 year olds, with results highlighting the benefits of this approach for creating appropriate designs.

Abstract: When building agents and synthetic characters, and in order to achieve believability, we must consider the emotional relations established between users and characters, that is, we must consider the issue of �empathy�. Defined in broad terms as �An observer reacting emotionally because he perceives that another is experiencing or about to experience an emotion�, empathy is an important element to consider in the creation of relations between humans and agents. In this paper we will focus on the role of empathy in the construction of synthetic characters, providing some requirements for such construction and illustrating the presented concepts with a specific system called FearNot!. FearNot! was developed to address the difficult and often devastating problem of bullying in schools. By using role playing and empathic synthetic characters in a 3D environment, FearNot! allows children from 8 to 12 to experience a virtual scenario where they can witness (in a third-person perspective) bullying situations. To build empathy into FearNot! we have considered the following components: agent�s architecture; the characters� embodiment and emotional expression; proximity with the user and emotionally charged situations.We will describe how these were implemented in FearNot! and report on the preliminary results we have with it.

Abstract: An evaluation study of a Virtual Learning Environment populated by synthetic characters for children to explore issues surrounding bullying behaviour is presented. This 225 participant evaluation was carried out with three stakeholder groups, (children, teachers and experts) to examine their attitudes and empathic styles about the characters and storyline believability. Results revealed that children expressed the most favourable views towards the characters and the highest levels of believability towards the bullying storyline. Children were more likely to have an empathic response than adults and found the synthetic characters more realistic and true-to-life.

Abstract: We describe the impact on analyst performance of an extended problem report format. Previous studies have shown that Heuristic Evaluation can only find a high proportion of actual problems (thoroughness) if multiple analysts are used. However, adding analysts can result in a high proportion of false positives (low validity). We report surprising interim results from a large study that is exploring the DARe model for evaluation method effectiveness. The DARe model relates the effectiveness of an evaluation method to evaluators' command of discovery and analysis resources. Previous work has shown that Heuristic Evaluation poorly supports problem discovery and analysis: heuristics tend to be inappropriately applied to problem predictions. We developed an extended problem report format to let us study analyst decision making during usability inspection. Our focus was on the quality of insights into analyst behaviour delivered by this extended report format. However, our first use of this format revealed unexpected improvements in validity (false positive reduction) and appropriate heuristic application. We argue that the format has unexpectedly led to more care and caution in problem discovery and elimination, and in heuristic application. Evaluation performance can thus be improved by indirectly 'fixing the analyst' via generic fixes to inspection methods. In addition, we provide the first direct evidence of how evaluators use separate discovery and analysis resources during usability inspection.