Children’s story authoring with Propp’s morphology

This thesis applies concepts from Vladimir Propp’s model of the narrative structure of fairy tales (Propp’s morphology) to a story authoring tool for children. A computer story authoring application based on Propp’s morphology is developed and evaluated through empirical studies with children. Propp’s morphology is a promising model of narrative for a children’s story authoring tool, with the potential to give children a powerful mental model with which to construct stories. Recent research has argued for the use of computer-based interactive narrative authoring tools (which enable the construction of interactive narrative computer games in which the player can affect or change the plot) to support children’s narrative development, and a number of interactive narrative systems use Propp’s morphology as their underlying model of narrative. These interactive narrative tools have many potential learning benefits and a powerful motivational effect for children, who enjoy using them to create narrative games. The potential of an interactive narrative system based on Propp’s morphology to support children’s construction of narratives seems great, combining Propp’s rich narrative model with the motivational benefits of interactive narrative. Before the application of Propp’s morphology in an interactive narrative game creation tool to support children’s writing could be pursued, it was necessary to study children’s story writing with Propp’s morphology. How can Propp’s morphology be represented in a story authoring tool for children? Can children apply Propp’s abstract narrative concepts to the task of creating their own original stories? How does using Propp’s morphology affect the stories written by children? Using the Propp-based authoring tool that is presented in this thesis children were able to grasp Propp’s abstract concepts and apply them to their own story writing. The use of a story authoring tool based on Propp’s morphology improved some aspects of the narrative structure of the stories written by children, and children reported that they enjoyed using the tool and felt it was helpful to their story writing. This thesis lays the foundation and identifies the methods for further study of children’s appropriation of narrative structure by constructing stories using a story authoring tool based on Propp’s morphology

Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity

StorySpinner: Controlling Narrative Pace in Hyperfiction

This paper describes the StorySpinner system, a sculptural hypertext reader used as a test bed for experimenting with the authoring of narrative flow in automatically generated stories. An overview of the system is presented along with discussion and conclusions arising from initial user trials

The Chawton House Experience - Augmenting the Grounds of a Historic Manor House

Museum research is a burgeoning area of research where ubiquitous computing has already made an impact in enhancing user experiences. The goal of the Chawton House project is to extend this work by introducing ubicomp not to a museum as such, but a historic English manor house and its grounds. This presents a number of novel challenges relating to the kinds of visitors, the nature of visits, the specific character of the estate, the creation of a persistent and evolving system, and the process of developing it together with Chawton House staff

An Introduction to Narrative Therapy

Counseling in a narrative way is a way of seeing, hearing, and thinking about clients’ problems as shaped and given meaning by stories or narratives. Problems are not hard realities that permanently define people; rather, they are problem stories by which people know themselves and are known by. This separating of the problem from the person opens up space for seeing the problem and thinking about it in new ways, and opens up the possibility of authoring a better story—a better way of being and doing, and is based on what has become a narrative mantra: “The problem is the problem. The person is not the problem” (Winslade & Monk, 1999, p. 2

A persistent infrastructure for augmented field trips

This paper describes an approach to the provision of pervasive field trips where a persistent infrastructure is provided, upon which teachers can easily create novel pervasive experiences for children. The physical infrastructure is briefly described along with the underlying information infrastructure, which enables the tools for authoring the content and designing the orchestration of the experience to be placed in the hands of teachers. A literacy experience and initial trials of the system are discussed, conclusions drawn, and future directions outlined

Designing Interactive Tools to Support Narrative Authoring for Elementary-School Children through Digital Enactment

Narrative is an important part of how humans make sense of the world and express their thoughts and feelings. For children, stories are the predominant way in which they organize and express ideas and imagination. Hence, stories have a significant role in children’s various play activities, especially pretend-play. At around the third to fifth grade period (8-10 years old), children are expected and encouraged to transition from embodied play to more formal linguistic modes of expression, such as writing. Supporting the child in this critical developmental stage is therefore very important in their development of writing proficiency. Research in writing support tools for children has generally focused more on facilitating the technical aspects of writing. But tapping into the potential of child’s embodied imagination capacity for writing support is less explored. This dissertation research poses the question that given the affinity children have for embodied activities and mediums, how can we use this potential in technology design to scaffold more formal types of expression. Within this scope, we present research that investigates the design of embodied technology to support narrative writing for novice writers during the third to fifth grade transition period. By developing a set of interactive tools and evaluating these tools with child participants, I explore how free-form play may be harnessed in systems to facilitate planning and writing an imaginative narrative at the elementary school level. Through this design exploration, I aim to extend the understanding of how using such embodied and interactive tools may augment the process in which children write stories and support them in writing more complex stories. We began our exploration by focusing on the development of a tool for capturing child’s enactment. Designed based on the concept of enactment-scaffolded authoring (also known as performative authoring), a story authoring system is presented whereby children’s story enactment is transformed in real-time into an animated video recording. Using this testbed system we investigated how children use enactment to plan their stories - as a “prewriting” activity. We also explored how features of the recorded video can augment the child’s experience and performance in the writing activity. Our studies provided evidence that using story-relevant avatars in the enacted video can support the child’s imagination, allowing them to focus on technical aspects of writing. We also uncovered that transforming the enacted story into written form is a challenge for children, so they need process support to translate the planned story into written form. We present design suggestions for children’s enactment-based authoring systems based on our findings. The next step of this research addresses the process support needed for children to transform a visual narrative into written form. We begin with a set of interviews with elementary school teachers to understand the general requirements for writing process support. An interface is developed that allows the child to watch an animated video and write the story in the video. The design is improved and finalized based on feedback from teacher interviewees. Using this system, we investigate two methods of implementing process support grounded in theories of multimedia learning and embodied cognition. Our results show that the cue design can affect how children respond to the cues, which in turn affects their writing performance. Temporally-situated cues support more structured and cohesive writing, while visually situated cues elicit more descriptive writing from children. The body of work that is presented in this dissertation contributes (i) An understanding of the opportunities and challenges of enactment-scaffolded narrative authoring for children and (ii) Design choices for embodied narrative writing support tools for children. The findings have significance in various domains of human-computer interaction research, including interaction design for children and interactive digital storytelling. Additionally, the interdisciplinary findings have significance in media studies, education research, and psychology to create more efficient educational content and pedagogical practice for the child audience