Fighting Bullying with the Help of Autonomous Agents in a Virtual School Environment

Using empathic virtual agents for Personal and Social Education is a powerful and immersive way to sensitise students for the problems and dangers related to persistent aggressive behaviour among students, also known as bullying. The work reported here relates to the evaluation of applying such agents in schools in the UK, Portugal, and Germany as well as to consequences that can be drawn from these evaluation results. The Bullying Problem The problem of bullying is well-known to educators and parents across Europe. Among others, the enduring victimisation of one student by one or more other students may cause health problems, depression, truancy, and even suicide in the victim. It has been defined as “repeated action that occurs regularly over time, and usually involves an imbalance in strength, either real or perceived” (Olweus, 1999). Bullying means various types of aggressive behaviour including punching, kicking, hitting (direct physical bullying), teasing and cruel name-calling (direct verbal bullying) and rather indirect actions like social exclusion or deliberate withdrawal from friendship (indirect relational bullying). To fight the serious long-term effects, the EU sponsored project VICTEC (Virtual ICT with Empathic Characters) intended to deliver a software product based on episodic virtual drama to be used in schools with the aim to enhance students’ insight in the destructive nature of bullying and sensitise them for the harmful consequences for the victim. By using a 3D virtual environment for education purpose, students are encouraged to explore the problem of bullying in a save and exiting environment. The basic idea is to encourage empathic processes towards the virtual victims of bullying and hence create sensitivity towards the bullying problem.