Exploring magic cottage: a virtual reality environment for stimulating children's imaginative writing

This paper presents an exploratory study that created a Virtual Reality Environment (VRE) to stimulatemotivation and creativity in imaginative writing at primary school level. The main aim of the study was toinvestigate if an interactive, semi-immersive Virtual Reality (VR) world could increase motivation andstimulate pupils’ imagination in the context of a writing task that is part of normal school practice and of thenational curriculum. The study was defined in close collaboration with the head teachers and teachers of twoScottish primary schools so that the implementation of the VRE fitted the needs of the curriculum. The impactof the VRE on the educational activity was evaluated through a formal assessment of the stories by anindependent marker, quantitative and qualitative analysis of the stories, and observations and interviews withthe teachers. This paper provides a description of the graphical environment and the technology used in thetrials, presents our method, results, and experiences. It is suggested that to interpret the observations, andmake further progress in both research and practice, it may be important to identify and support three subskillsof "imaginative writing" separately: creative imagination, recalling and structuring what to say, and languageskills