Conferinţa Naţională de Învăţământ Virtual

VIRTUAL LEARNING – VIRTUAL REALITY

SOFTWARE & MANAGEMENT EDUCAŢIONAL

Dedicată împlinirii a 100 de ani de la naşterea lui Grigore C. Moisil

2006 – ANUL INTERNAŢIONAL UNESCO

“GRIGORE C. MOISIL”
 © Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
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Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României

SOFTWARE ŞI MANAGEMENT. CONFERINŢA NAŢIONALĂ DE

ÎNVĂŢĂMÂNT VIRTUAL – CNIV 2005 (2 ; 2005; Bucureşti)

Lucrările Conferinţei Naţionale de Învăţământ Virtual:

ediţia a III-a, Bucureşti, 28-30 octombrie, 2005. Software
educaţional/ed:I.Chiţescu, H. Georgescu, V. Preda, … -
Bucureşti: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2005

ISBN 973-737-097-X

Coordonator: Conf. univ. dr. Marin Vlada

Conferinţa Naţională de Învăţământ Virtual, ediţia a III-a, 2005 1 of 8

Using a theater-based metaphor in education

D.M.Popovici – OVIDIUS University of Constanta / CERV France,

dmpopovici@univ-ovidius.ro, popovici@enib.fr
L.D.Serbanati – Politehnica University of Bucharest,
lucaserbanati@ing.pub.ro

Abstract
The VTheater project we present, adopts the virtual-theater metaphor in order to
maintain a shared information space as an agent-based environment. It distributes
agent behavioral description as scripts among all the actors and ensures the
persistence of real actors. The cooperation within the environment is preserved by
interfering with virtual actors. Because it develop the users communication skills, it is
specially dedicated to children. By the means of their avatars, users are allowed to
experience, to interact and to communicate within a performance. The implementation
is based on a client-server architecture. VRML, C++, and Java are used as languages
and ARéVi as graphical rendering API.

1. Introduction

When we talk about learning at childhood age we are usually using a story
metaphor, because narrative lends itself to active exploration of a domain through
challenging and enjoyable problem-solving activities, which is essential for learning.
On the other hand, the informal context in which the child learns has evolved a lot
in the past three decades. New technologies as Internet, multimedia, and virtual reality
are now part of our children everyday life. Its facilitate learning through the
construction of concepts built from the intuitions that arise from their direct experience
of the environment [1,2]. Moreover, several studies suggest that cooperation between
children in virtual environments have a positive effect on learning [3]. It is not very
unusual that performances that were expected without results in a child-adult context
may appear in a children cooperative context. This makes from collaborative learning
one of the most important requirements of our technology. Within a group of children,
each child contributes with its knowledge to the others children's knowledge. In order
to realise this informational transfer, the children develops communication and
cooperation skills, often by invoking a narrative context [4].
Our paper presents VTheater, a virtual theater-based distributed environment,
dedicated especially to children. The virtual environment maintains a shared
information space which distributes agent's behavioral description, like script between
all the actors, and ensures the persistence of real actors, and the sense of cooperation
by the means of virtual ones.
In the following, after a brief review of the virtual environments dedicated
especially for children, we present the VTheater environment. After a general
description of the project, we give some insights concerning the architecture and the
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implementation. Finally, we will present the current state of the project as well as our
future directions.

2. Background

The VR-based educational environments' evolution may be argumented by the

greater understanding of concepts through the creation of multi-modal metaphors or
representations, and the ability to interact with these representations [5,6]. Tracking
this evolution, the purposes of these environments can be very different.
While narrative-based systems as Oz [7,8], Virtual Theatre [9], NICE [10] or
KidsRoom [11] have been mainly developed for entertainment, CityGame [12] study
the children' ability to find physically and mentally one's way in the 2D and 3D
environments. Round Earth [3] and QuickWorlds projects [13] look at the issues
involved in the use of projection based VR systems with children, specifically in the
well known ImmersaDesk [14] or CAVE-based VR theatres. The effectiveness of
multiple representations in enhancing education in elementary school is investigated.
Systems as GhostWriter [15] goes further and evaluate the use of VE and computer
mediated communication technology in the domain of teaching children story writing
skills. Based on improvisation, as a social and perceptual experience, the children are
expecting to interact with each other, playing the roles of different characters, as in
GhostWriter.
In Puppet [16], children are allowed to play multiple roles in an interactive
narrative: audience, actor, scriptwriter, and editor. They are able to both "dive in",
taking on the role of a character in the drama, and to "step out", reasoning about a
characters emotional states and goals., as well as reflecting upon their own character
dialogue recorded while playing with the system as scriptwriter.
While in Storykit [17] children create physical immersive story environments using
low-tech construction materials such as cardboard, glue, paper and ink pens, as well as
high-tech smart objects, in Teatrix [18] they are doing the same using a set of pre-
defined scenes and a set of pre-defined characters. These characters may act either on
behalf of the children or autonomously. Each child will expect the story to evolve in
reaction to characters actions. So, their character must act in a credible way, in order
for the story creation environment to engage the children in an entertaining experience,
which can meet the child cognitive needs to interpret, understand and interact with the
world in term of stories.
In EVE [19] is adopted a story-based approach in order to help and motivate
children to learn reading by playing. The proposed story is based on a set of images
distributed in a virtual school. Images are described by sentences, and the sentences are
constructed using a set of labels. In order to discover the story, the children have to
first reconstruct the sentences, so to discover the real description of the images. Then,
they cooperate in order to find the correct order for the discovered images.

3. VTheater – general description

The ongoing VTheater project offer to its users an environment for script recitation
and for supporting everybody who wants to recite some scripts. As a continuation of
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the EVE project, the environment we propose helps children to develop collaboration
and communication skils within a story-based context. This time, we invite children to
get closer to the story, by "steping into" and "live" it.
The children are encouraged to be co-constructors of narration. This way, we
promoting the connection-building meaning-making activities that define constructivist
learning. Moreover, the children may experience the system as actors or as active
audience.
From this perspectives, VTheater project is related with the Puppet and EVE
projects, and extends the current forms of early learning through game by developing a
range of collaborative interactive environments.
VTheater project has as main objectives to offer an open framework for
participation of heterogenous entities/agents types (human or not) for obtaining and
playing a script, to allow script description/modification (characters, replicas, settings,
etc) on the fly, to use different communication types, at behavioral and emotional
levels, and to preserve the collaboration.
In a VTheater experience (see figure 1) there are three main user classes involved:
audience, actor, and author.

a. b. c.
Figure 1. The user login (a), the representation (b) and the authoring (c) interfaces.

A spectator is someone who wants to attend the performance, and can freely
communicate and interact with all other participants in the environment. This way, the
spectator may influence the performance evolution.
An actor takes part actively to the representation by interpreting a role based on the
current script. He can recite his lines, in or outside the script, but when the script is
being played, he is expected to say the correct line.
"Cooperation" is an important concept of our description. Supposing that roles have
been chosen, the script is currently playing, and, for some unexpected causes, a user is
determined to quit the performance. In such situations, the script cannot continue
because nobody take the released role. In order to avoid this type of blocking, we have
introduced a new user type, the virtual actor, an agent that coexists within the script
and acts in the absence of a real actor. So, it allows scripts to be performed, according
to the scenario, even if there is no real actor on the stage. The role of the virtual actor is
to preserve the spirit of cooperation until the end of the game.
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The author has the possibility to suggest to artists what he wants, by using the
virtual actors, or by sending them hints. He is responsible for the initial script
preparation (see figure 1.c). If he wants to view the script, he must turn to be either an
actor or an ordinary spectator.

4. The VTheater architecture

The VTheater environment, defined from the user's perspective, is populated by

virtual entities, briefly called entities, that correspond to objects populating the real
world. As presented in [20], by using various criteria, the set of entities within the
virtual environment may be structured in order to obtain complex entities. An entity
within the virtual environment, able to perceive, decide, and react based on its internal
needs, objectives (as replicas), psychological profile and abilities is called virtual
agent.
The interactions between agents are based on the notion of stimuli, viewed as
containers of information concerning the agent state. Every change of the agent's state
represents a possible cause of an interaction and may be followed by a stimulus
emission. All the agent's actions are followed by stimuli emissions: position and
orientation changes, setting objects manipulation, performing replica.
User's avatars used in VTheater are a particular kind of virtual agents.

4.1. The stage environment

The VTheater environments are usually bounded (but not neccessary) by the ground
and the panorama and contains different setting objects. The user's actions are
restricted to the stage space, and depend on his attributes (height, step size, etc) [21]
and capabilities. Moreover, setting objects may have semantic meaning according to
the script context, and may be the agent's interactions subject.

4.2. The virtual agents

The virtual agents used in VTheater acts as actors, audience or performance

manager.
The real actor. In order to favorise the acceptance of the environment by the
children, we have decided to keep the avatars used in EVE and to enhance their
behaviors. The implemented behavior mechanisms are: talk (textual and sound 3D
emission), look at (head orientation followed by body orientation), walk to..., flik of the
eyes, standby, hello, goodbye. In order to assure to avatars complex behavior,
combinations of behaviors are possible.
We constrained the talk behavior of avatars. While the script is being played, the
avatar who is enabled to emit sound and text, is exactly the actor who is expected to
recite a line. For all other avatars sound emission is forbidden. A message like "Say
line #" is displayed when an actor should recite a line. Moreover, if the recited line is
not the correct one, the actor who recites is only warned by the performance director.
Nevertheless, the actor is free to create minor variations on the expected replica in a
satisficing manner in real time [22], so to improvise. This way we ensure a clean flow
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of the script and free communication between all the users that share the same
VTheater experience.
The virtual actor. A virtual actor is a virtual agent which act as an actor,
autonomously. Having the same aspect of an avatar, it ensures the persistence of the
roles during a playing performance.
Let suppose a real actor who, for some reason, wants to quit the performance before
its end. Due to the existence of virtual actors, he/she can do this without disturbing the
flow of the script; its role being switched to the corresponding virtual actor.
Inversely, in the case there is a user who wants to assume a role from the script that
is currently being played, and this role is played by a virtual actor, then he/she can
assume the role and continue the script from its current state.
More, a spectator is able to assist into a performance even when no real actor is on
the stage, all the roles from the script being played by virtual actors.
The performance manager. Once a performance started, the manager, as virtual
agent, indicates to each actor the replica that he has to say. During the performance, he
detects any mistake made by the actors and addresses warning messages to the failing
actors; as guidelines for the real user which will be followed if possible. The manager
is also responsible for informing all the participants at the performance of any script
changing, and if needed, for uploading the neccesary resources for performance to
continue.

4.3. The performance

The VTheater environment dynamic is directed by the script and is influenced by

the participants evolution performance.
The script is an ordered set of replica, which will be exchanged between some
actors. Multi-modal representations of the replica are used, as textual and audio (see
figure 2). For a replica to be fully described, the involved speaker(s) and listener(s),
among the actors or audience, must be specified.
In order to assure the virtual actors believability we consider emotion and
motivation as essential factors in their behavioral responses. For the agent's behavioral
description we are using a set of Fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM), and for action planning
specification we use three FCM-like operators, ALL(all), FOF(first of) and
SEQ(sequence), as introduced in [20].
The main action plan for the virtual actor in VTheater correspond to its
performance:

Perform = ALL ( FOF( SayReplica , ListenReplica ) , AvoidCollision )

which means that an actor performance suppose an echange of replica (as speaker or
listener) and, if the case, avoiding collision.

SayReplica = SEQ ( FindListener , ApprochToListener , TalkToListener )

In order to say its replica, the speaker has to find its listener, then to approach close
enought to the listener, and finally to say the replica. As listener, the actor has only to
suspend any other activated actions.
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The corresponding action plan for the performance is:

ControlScenario = SEQ ( SendReplica , WaitReplica )

Once the replica ended, the speaker inform the performance manager and the latter
one will continue within scenario and inform the next speaker about the replica that he
perform.

5. Implementation

The current implementation of the project is based on a client-server solution. The

server has multiple functionalities. The main one is to leads users to reach the desired
performance and to dispatch all messages sent by clients. Moreover, based on the
current users actions, it manages the life cycle of virtual actors. Let suppose that a
virtual actor is performing, and a real user wants to play its role. Then, the avatar is
turned off until its role is released by the user.
Authoring and versioning mechanisms are set in order to permit the reuse of
existing scenari and to guarantee their coherence. All the resources files are made
accessible to the clients site through an Apache Web Server [23]. The environment,
setting object and avatar models were obtained unsing 3D Studio Max and are stored at
the server site in VRML [24] format.
On the client side, the user immersion into the VTheater enviroment is realised by
the means of an ARéVi API-based application [25]. This interface allows the user to
carry out complex tasks by mixing the implemented avatar behaviors. The agent's
atomic actions were considered as imperative methods and forms the agent's
capabilities. They are used in the actions' plan realization.
At the startup, the versioning mechanism determines the corresponding cache
content, and authorises, if needed, the upload of the selected script. When the user logs
in, the client adds all active avatars to the virtual world. Then it attaches the
interaction-navigation metaphor. Finally, it updates the avatars state depending on their
behavior, in the local replica of the virtual world.
As presented so far, all the resources are downloaded only once at the client startup.
From this point the communication within the distributed environment is minimal. We
claim that this solution is optimal for distributed virtual environments because it
minimizes the network traffic.
The client also provides a Java-based component which permits the scenario
descriptions to be stored locally or published at the server repository, under the form of
XML files.

6. Current state

The project was first proposed for research and development projects, with the
objective to design an easy to use and reuse interface that would allow:
for authors to create new scripts, to imagine and test stages and characters
for actors to play a script
for audience to visualize the performance.
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Based on the instructional merits that this program can offer, the project has taken
the turn to offer a valuable educational tool for its audience.
It is particularly useful for children because it allows them to learn new stories,
tales, and languages (written and spoken), while encouraging them to collaborate.
As stated in [26], children play an important role in creating new technologies for
children. During discussions, children and teachers gives a strong feedback concerning
the stories subject and multi-modal representations. Moreover, the children were
involved, at their own initiative, in audio support of the story creation process. This
way, we were able to understand not only the children influence onto the design
process, but also how the new technologies can impact children as users, and even as
creators of these technologies.
In addition, the integration of teachers as environmental and pedagogical designers
has permitted us to realise a balance between technical and educational aspects of our
project.
At this stage of the project, the application has been successfully tested with
children from 5 to 15 years old, and even with graduate students. According with their
age, they have played different roles, starting with audience and actors for the youngest
and ending with author for the oldest ones.
During the working sessions, cooperation and communication between the users
have appeared in virtual as well as the real environment. By proposing to children
different situations, as audience, actor or author of the environment, we keep a high
level of children motivation and increase their autonomy.

7. Future directions

In term of future work we are enhancing the settings collection. The possibility to
interactively manipulate (create/delete) objects will be made available to the user. By
making VTheater a persistent environment, the children will be able to find their
previous collective creations.
We are currently extending the avatar collection as well as the hierarchy of avatar
behaviors and user interactions. We do not exclude the implementation of a society of
avatars. In such a society each avatar should have responsibilities and rights. Doing so,
avatars personalities may be attached to roles and even emotional or behavioral hints
may be suggested in the replica specification.
New applications could be developed in other domains of interest than foreign
languages. Virtual reality enables the development of new products that will help
teachers and children to collaborate in educational environments.

8. Acknowledgements

Thanks goes to our colleagues from CERV, OVIDIUS University and European FP6 -
INTUITION project, which were interested in and have encouraged our work.

9. References
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