Using a Collaborative Virtual Role-Play Environment to Foster Characterisation in Stories

This article reports the results of a field study evaluation of avirtual role-play environment, Ghostwriter, which was de-signed as a preparation activity for writing stories. It exam-ines the effects Ghostwriter has on characterisation in chil-dren’s imaginative writing.Ghostwriter is based on a commercial computer game. Twochildren and one role-play leader interact with each other ina perceptually realistic virtual world. Each role-player con-trols an avatar representing a character in the adventure sto-ry. Children can move these avatars around in the virtualworld, and can communicate with others by sending and re-ceiving typed messages.The virtual role-play environment was evaluated in a fieldstudy with 60 children aged between 10-12 years. The char-acterisation in stories written after using Ghostwriter wascompared to the characterisation in stories written under nor-mal classroom circumstances. The stories were compared us-ing a new, fine-grained analysis scheme for assessing chil-dren’s writing. The main result is that the stories written after