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