USING CONTEXTUALIZED NARRATIVE GAME TO IMPROVE

STUDENTS AND TEACHERS COMMUNICATION

Marcos Alexandre Rose Silva, Ana Luiza Dias and Junia Coutinho Anacleto

Federal University of São Carlos, Washigton Luis KM 235, São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

Keywords: Collaboration, Storyteller, Narrative Game, Context, Common Sense, Education, Educational game.

Abstract: Nowadays, school faces several educational challenges to teach children some skills, like ways to express

themselves in an appropriate way in their community and how to collaboratively work in group. However, it

is still very difficult for educator to find tools that are appropriate and in accordance to their pedagogical

planning to stimuli students on those skills. Computers can potentially be a useful tool to promote

expression, communication and collaboration, but the available tools are not yet so user friendly for school

context of teaching and learning. Considering such reality, this game allows educators being co-authors on

creating the story context taking into account their goals, pedagogical approach and the student’s cultural

reality. Then, teachers can adopt values, metaphors, cause and consequence relations or even a common

vocabulary before and during the narrative game and, consequently, enabling students to feel identified in

that story context being considered and get interested and engaged in collaborating with the teacher and

other students to develop the story. In order to observe the use of this game in an educational environment

and collect the target group opinion, a study case was performed at school with teachers and children, and is

described in this paper.

1 INTRODUCTION

Games and storytelling serve an important role in

children’s development (Piaget, 1999). Computers

are increasingly present in the children’s world

(Weib et al., 2008). Therefore, why not to use them

to support children in educational context?

Educational environment is very important to the

children’s quality of life, because this environment

influences intellectual and socio-cultural growth so

that they can expand their social, interpersonal,

cognitive and linguistic skills.

The quality of relationships established at

school, especially at the elementary school, can

affect their learning and development. Because of

that, the relationship among students and between

students and teachers is very important. According

to Benford et al. (2000), collaboration is also other

important skill for young children to learn. These

skills should be learned during childhood. In Brazil

and in other emergent countries teaching those skills

at school is still a challenge. Another skill that is

important in education is to know how to live and to

communicate with different people because each

person has his own culture, values and socio-cultural

reality (Bittencourt et al., 2003).

On the other hand, activities to promote work in

group can rarely occur spontaneously (Diaz-Aguado,

2003) so that teachers and students need to have

activities and tools to support this new way of

studying. Because of that, an educational computer

narrative game to help teachers to work

collaboratively with their students through a cultural

sensitive storytelling environment is presented here.

This game was developed to children from 8 to

12 years old. According to Piaget (1999) in this

phase the children are in the stage called Operational

Concrete Thought. In this stage child has great

interest in games and finds new ways to play and to

work collaboratively. They also have facilities to

build and to maintain friendships using computers;

they usually interact with one another virtually.

2 CONTEXTELLER

Contexteller is a narrative game inspired in Role-

Playing Game – RPG (Bittencourt et al., 2003). In

this type of game there are participants and the

master, who usually is the most experienced player

and his task is to present the story to the group, with

characters, their characteristics, scenarios and

situations that require choices by other participants,

232

Silva M., Dias A. and Anacleto J. (2010).

USING CONTEXTUALIZED NARRATIVE GAME TO IMPROVE STUDENTS AND TEACHERS COMMUNICATION.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 232-237

DOI: 10.5220/0002787302320237

 SciTePress

who are the players. These players are not just

spectators; they contribute actively in the story,

through their characters that choose paths and take

own decisions, and most of the time not foreseen by

the master contributing to the spontaneous and

unexpected development of the story. In the context

work the master is the teacher who introduces the

story and intervenes collaboratively with the players.

The players are the students, the co-authors of the

narrative.

Figure 1 shows the interface available for

players. This interface allows the players to see their

card (I), their dice (II), and the text area (III), which

allows the master to read all the messages sent to

students and master during the composition of the

collaborative story. In area (IV), the card, with

another color and size, represents the master of the

game, and area (V) shows to other characters´ card

(Silva et al., 2009).

Figure 1: Contexteller interface.

Contexteller also intends to help children to notice

familiarity with the characters, their characteristics

and plot of the story. Therefore, this gives the teacher

computer support through contextualized information

so that he/she can create and tell stories. This support

is provided by common sense that represents cultural

aspects of the students´ community.

The common sense knowledge is obtained by the

Open Mind Common Sense in Brazil Project

(OMCS-Br). This project has been collected

common sense of a general public through a web site

(Silva et al., 2009).

Students can identify themselves with the story

when they observe that it is closer to their reality,

i.e., what happens in the story is or can be similar to

their way of living. Explain better, through stories,

which consider the culture, the values, the beliefs, in

short, the players´ common sense, can allow the

players to identify themselves with the story

language, characters and scenarios. Because of this

allows them to identify mean in the story, then they

can have greater interest in participating in it.

Because of this, Contexteller supports teachers

on defining the initial context and the content of the

game design considering the community’s

knowledge where students live. The initial context

represents the scenario setup with objects, scripts,

characters, their characteristics, actions and abilities

that are going to compose the stories initially. The

content of the story has been built collaboratively by

the players and master.

In order to observe the use of this game in an

educational environment and also collect the views

of students and teachers about the game, a case

study was realized, described in next section.

3 CASE STUDY

Case Study was adopted because in this strategy

there are the necessary tools to conduct research in

order to observe in a real-life context, in this case, in

the classroom. According to Yin (2002), Case Study

is a type of empirical research that investigates a

phenomenon embedded in a context of real life

(Dias, 2009).

3.1 Planning of the Case Study

Place: The Case Study was performed in a school

that is a partner of educational projects in the

Research Laboratory where the Contexteller Game

was developed, in the state of Sao Paulo – Brazil

with about fifty thousand people.

Ways of Collecting Data: To collect data the Case

Study some sources of evidence were used, such as:

 Questionnaires: Two types of questionnaires

were used:

Pre-section was distributed to the participants

before the interaction with the Contexteller Game. In

this questionnaire, the data were collected according

to the participant’s backgrounds, the familiarity with

computers, computer games, their satisfaction to

hear and tell stories.

Post-section was given to the participants after

interacting with the Contexteller Game to collect not

only information about the experience but also the

facilities and difficulties perceived during the Game.

 Video recording and screen capture:

All interactions were also recorded using software,

called Camtasia, which can record the screen, the

participant's face and his voice. These records (audio

users - thinking aloud, user’s interaction record and

user’s expression image) very important and valid to

demonstrate the levels of attention and interest of

individuals, consider some quantitative criteria (Yin,

2002).

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Infrastructure: One of the initial concerns was to

identify if the school had Internet access and the

amount of available computers. It was found that the

school had access to broadband Internet and three

networked computers. To realize case study, it

would take six computers, five for students and one

for the teacher. Therefore, for the case study could

be realized, was a improvised with five laptops and

two desktop computers provided by the laboratory

from UFSCar, with external mouse, headphones

with microphone and installed software to capture

user interaction.

Method: This case study has divided the Case Study

in three steps, each one with a distinct goal, which

will be described as to following:

 First Step: to explain the process and purpose

of the Case Study for the school coordinator;

 Second Step: to show and use the Contexteller

Game with the teacher so that she could know

the Game;

 Third Step: to use the Contexteller Game in

educational environment with teachers and

students interacting.

3.1.1 First Step

The proposal of the first step was presented to the

coordinator of the school whole steps of the case

study, the Contexteller and explained ways of

collecting data.

Presenting Contexteller to Coordinator: An

instance of the narrative Contexteller Game was

created in order to explain to the coordinator all user

interfaces which the teacher and the students would

have access during their interaction with the Game.

The coordinator reaction seemed positive during all

the presentation, because she kept her attention on

the presented questions and gave some tips related to

other ways to use Contexteller, as:

“While I´m listening the presentation, many

possibilities comes to my mind. Did you imagine that

this Game can be used in many ways? An idea that

came to my mind is that I can use the Game during

the History classes. For example, I can choose some

Brazilian History characters and define that each

student will be one of them and through these

character the students can learn not only the

History, but they will experience it too. ” “There are

lot of possibilities with this Game. The possibility to

retrieve common sense suggestions is very

important.” Another important factor addressed in

this first step was the teachers choose.

The coordinator said that she had thought in a set

of possible teachers to participate of the case study,

but after the Game presentation she decided to

choose a teacher that is more communicative and

that likes to interact with people in a happy and

spontaneous way. Including, this teacher works

nowadays in a municipal school, but she worked

during few years in the school which the case study

was conducted. Thus, the coordinator invited this

teacher to attend the study case and she accepted.

3.1.2 Second Step

Besides the teacher chosen by the coordinator, other

teachers showed interest in participating of this step.

In total, there were three teachers. This step started

with the presentation of the study case’s liable

people and with the Pre-section questionnaires

delivery. Through the Pre-section questionnaire, it

was possible to identify the teacher profile and some

information related to her familiarity to the stories,

games and computers. Teachers have utilized

internet more than 2 years, some activities, which

they usually do, are represented on Figure 2. This

questionnaire also shown that teachers like to tell

and to listen stories and they often do these activities

with students in their classes.

Figure 2: Some activities that teachers usually do on the

Internet.

Presenting Contexteller to the Teachers: During

the Contexteller presentation, some subjects were

addressed, like: the Game objective and why the

choice of a computational narrative Game. In this

step, a Contexteller Game instance was also created

in order to show all the user interfaces that the

teacher and students would have access.

During the presentation, the teachers pointed out

two positive aspects: the common sense and the co-

authoring possibility. Teachers said that common

sense stimulates creativity; expands the possibilities

and the repertory. They also found relevant the

possibility to create a game instance according to

their needs, i.e., the possibility to be co-authors.

The teachers reported that many times they

searched on the Web in order to find learning

materials to use in class, but they said that it is too

difficult to find a learning material that fits the target

audience needs. Teacher 3 reported: “We know what

we want, but we can’t find it”. Teacher 1: “That is

right ”.

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Then, Teacher 2 reported one of her experience

with learning material edition: “Most of the time I

need to print the material founded in the Web, scan

it and change the material according to what I

want… I do this because I can’t change the site, but

maybe I don't know how to use it properly, but I

think that the site doesn't have this feature at all”.

Using Contexteller: The instance created during the

Game presentation was used to play with the

teachers. Each participant was one of the characters

and one of the researchers was the master. This

possibility to allow the teacher to play taking into

consideration students´ role was a coordinator

suggestion given in the first step. To her, this could

help the teachers know the tool better. They showed

a lot of interest and engagement. This could be

observed through the video analysis in which they

gave laughter when some objective was achieved

and they whisper some words to the other teachers,

as: “I did it”, “Nice”, etc.

Creating an Instance of Contexteller: After the

presentation, discussion and interaction with the

Game, the teachers were invited to create an instance

of the Game. It was possible to observe three

different ways to use common sense knowledge to

create the Game instance. The Teacher 1 utilized the

common sense to find some character names and

characteristics according to the suspense scenario

that she was developing. She said that: “the common

sense enriches”.

Teacher 2 preferred to see all the existing

characters that exist inside the common sense

knowledge base, and using these options, choose

some characters which she knows and have domain.

Through the video analysis, it was possible to

observe a comment that Teacher 2 did to the Teacher

1: “I want to use a story that I have certainty that I

know… to do the inferences. I don’t want to choose

characters that I don’t know. I want to use one that I

have some domain”. In this case, it is perceived that

the Teacher 2 was afraid to create a story which she

could lose the situation’s control.

Teacher 3 preferred to define the characters,

their characteristics and the scenario without utilize

the common sense. After, she reported: “I stuck in

the first step and I didn’t use the common sense. It’s

interesting that I wanted to resume it and try the

common sense. It’s a database that is available and

I didn’t open the box. Did you understand? I went

straight. I think that I did it because I didn’t have

experience with the tool”.

After this creating process, the teachers filled

pos-section questionnaires. Some questions and

teachers´ answerers are in Table 1. It was possible to

observe that teachers liked to use Contexteller and

thought appropriate many their functions. Only

teacher 3 considered the use of common sense as

indifferent because she did not use it.

Table 1: Some pos-section questions and teachers´

answers.

Questions

Answers

Teacher 1 Teacher 2 Teacher 3

What do you think about

process of creating a

Game?

stimulant stimulant stimulant

What do you think about

the steps of the Game?

appropriate appropriate

inappropriate

Was information on the

Game´s interface clear?

clear clear clear

Did common sense help

you to define characters?

useful useful indifferent

Did common sense help

you to define characters´

characteristics?

useful very useful indifferent

Do you observe any

disadvantage to use

common sense?

no no no

3.1.3 Third Step

Three options were offered to teachers in order to

investigate the use of common sense in a second

contact with Contexteller:

1. Changing the instance created at the second

step,

2. Creating new instance, or

3. Using an instance already created.

Teacher 2 chose the option 2, i.e., to create a new

instance of the Game again. Because of this, she

came to school 30 minutes before the students. This

was the time teachers used to create an instance at

the Second step.

It was possible to observe, analyzing videos, that

the teacher used common sense cards more in this

second contact with Contexteller, as illustrated in

Table 2. In this table there are how many times each

teacher searched and used the common sense help in

first and second contact.

Table 2: Using common sense through Contexteller.

Teacher First contact Second contact

Teacher 1

Searched: 8 times

Used: 6 times

Searched: 11 times

Used: 11 times

Teacher 2

Searched: 9 times

Used: 6 times

Searched: 12 times

Used: 8 times

Teacher 3

Searched: 0 times

Used: 0 times

Searched: 5 times

Used: 2 times

Pre-Section Questionnaire – Children: Students

were invited to get into the classroom to fill pre-

section questionnaires while the teacher was

creating an instance of the Game. Five pre-

questionnaires and five pens were organized on the

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desks. Through this type of questionnaire it was

possible to collect some information about the

students´ profile and their familiarity with stories,

games and computers, as in Figure 3. There were

five students: Gender – 3 Feminine and 2 Male; Age

– 11 and 12 years old.

It was possible to observe that students like to

use computers, as well as, listen and tell stories. On

the other hand, nobody has contact with the

computer in an education environment.

Figure 3: Some pre-section questions and students´

answers.

Using Contexteller: Figure 4 presents how the

computers, two desktops and five notebooks, were

distributed in the classroom. The students used

notebooks; the teacher accessed the Game trough a

desktop and another desktop registered the whole

interaction between the teacher and the students.

Figure 4: Teacher and students using Contexteller.

Story: Teacher 2 created a scenario about a castle.

The characters were: Beauty, Witch, Princess, Elf,

Vampire and the Teacher. She wrote on the

scenario: “'ONCE UPON A TIME A CASTLE ON

THE MOUNTAIN. THERE WAS A SIGN, ON THE

CASTLE DOOR, WITH THESE WORDS: "COME

ON! LET’S HAVE FUN! YOU WILL LIKE IT VERY

MUCH!".

Teacher 2 invited each character to enter the

castle; this behavior was in her planning to find out

if the students would get interested in the story.

Beauty was the first invited character: “WOULD

YOU LIKE TO ENTER THIS CASTLE. BELA, DO

YOU WANT TO ENTER IT?” Bela got very

interested as well as the other characters, she

answered: “Oh yes, I would like to enter in so much,

I think that there are many stories in this castle.”

Elf: “yes, it would be a great honor to enter in it”.

When all characters were in the castle, the

teacher wrote: “NOW, EVERYBODY IS IN THE

CASTLE. WE CAN START THE STORY. OPS! I

ALMOST FORGOT, I NEED TO EXPLAIN THAT

WE CAN´T LEAVE THIS PLACE, WE NEED TO

FIND OUT THE PASSWORD BEFORE.”

The students´ behavior showed a good

collaboration to each other. The teacher sometimes

sent some motivated messages, such as: “INVITE A

FRIEND TO FIND OUT THIS WITH YOU.” At the

end of the story there was a wonderful collaboration

among them because they needed to find out the

password together; this password was the beginning

of their character’s name, i.e., BWPEV (Beauty,

Witch, Princess, Elf, Vampire).

During the story, the teacher has used the

common sense twice. First, to know what the

students know about castle, and second what there is

in the castle.

Pos-section Questionnaires – Students: After

the Game, which took 45 minutes, the students

received the pos-section questionnaires. The answers

confirmed the enthusiasm noticed through the

videos. They wrote that Contexteller was very cool

and funny. They also enjoyed the colors, the

characters and the use of the Game was: easy.

Through this question (Who was your character?

Did you like him/her? Why?), all students answered

that they liked their characters chosen by the teacher

with common sense help. Some of their comments:

Student 5: “I loved very much to be an Elf, I

imagined that I was him”; Student 1: “My character

was Beauty. I liked her very much, she helped a lot

to find out the password”; Student 3: “I was a

Vampire and I like it. Because of this, I enjoyed to be

one”.

Most of the students considered very cool the

possibility of telling stories with the teacher and

friends; they also observed that everybody helped to

tell the story. Students said that they did not want to

stop the story; on the contrary, they wanted to play

with their friends again. When they read the question

about what they liked most, they answered: Student

1: “I liked to use my imagination to find out the

password”, Student 2: “Everything”, Student 3:

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“mystery”, Student 4: “I though that everything was

real”, Student 5: “I liked to use the imagination”.

Pos-section Questionnaires – Teacher: The

teacher considered the Game easy and she liked to

tell the story with the students through the

Contexteller. She liked to use a scenario that she

created by herself.

“There are many common sense suggestions to

support before and during the story”, she said in the

questionnaire. She did not see any disadvantages in

using common sense. Her opinion, “common sense

is a good way to get to know the students´ culture

and language. I believe that exchanging knowledge

is important to learn in a collaborative way and it is

a source of knowledge for everybody”.

She wrote that the Game was suitable for

children to express themselves and to work

collaboratively. The teacher realized that the

students collaborate with each other: “Characters

were interconnected. It was important the

collaboration.” She realized that the students´

motivation during the story was good: “I noticed

that the students were curious about what could

happen later”.

Analyzing the videos, it was observed that the

teacher was having fun with the story; she laughed

and was interested in reading all the messages. This

behavior demonstrated engagement and motivation.

About her motivation she wrote: “I thought that this

activity was very interesting and pleasant and there

were many possibilities to help and to improve

students´ imagination and creativity”.

Her last comment about the Game: “It was a

pleasure to play this Game. I believe that it can be a

good tool for teachers to help students to improve

themselves in many development and knowledge

areas”.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The results of the case study have shown that

Contexteller is a good tool to achieve these

objectives mentioned above. The students got

involved and liked the stories. They also identified

themselves with their characters and participated

taking consideration the character`s characteristics

defined by the teacher. They also participated

actively, facing and proposing challenges; helping

each other during the whole story to reach a

common aim.

The use of Contexteller as tool to help

collaborative work was other positive data collected

through questionnaires, logs, interviews, among

others. The teacher said that she could identify how

students collaborate in the stories and then she could

propose some challenges to stimulate students to

work better in a collaborative way.

The teacher also said that Contexteller, most of

the time, was an appropriate tool to allow students to

express themselves. They helped to tell stories

through their characters and used that moment as an

opportunity to talk to participants and enjoy

themselves.

The case study showed evidences that the

common sense knowledge makes easier for teacher

to define characters with their characteristics, themes

and scenarios. For the teacher this knowledge helps

to remember these pieces of information and to

present what the students like. Students also

described in questionnaires that all the characters

(chosen with common sense help) were very cool.

Common sense also supports teachers to tell

contextualized stories with characters, events,

places, among others that students know. For

example, in this case study the teacher has used the

common sense twice. First, to know what the

students know about castle, and second what there is

in the castle.

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