FearNot! An Anti-Bullying Intervention: Evaluation of an Interactive Virtual Learning Environment

The eCIRCUS (Education through Characters with Interactive Role-playing Capabilities that Understand Social interaction) project aims to develop an anti-bullying software, FearNot!, and evaluate its effectiveness in the classroom. This paper presents findings from two evaluations conducted during the 2006 National I-Power-I Anti-bullying Conference for Young People. Participants interacted with FearNot! v.1 (scripted version) and then either completed a short questionnaire (in Study 1) or took part in focus groups (in Study 2) evaluating the difference between two versions of FearNot! (scripted versus unscripted). Overall the results suggest that perfect graphics are not necessary for users to engage empathically with autonomous agents, and that the virtual characters did evoke emotional reactions. It is concluded that development of the FearNot! demonstrator is progressing well and that FearNot! will be a useful and engaging intervention against bullying in primary