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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
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European Teens United in Cyberspace to Tackle Bullying
Research teams from the UK, Italy, Germany, Spain and Romania have been developing avatar@school, an online environment for teenagers in schools to cooperatively deal with bullying and victimisation. Using virtual role-play game scenarios, the project aims to prevent violence amongst young people through peer mediation. The games developed in this project enable students to interact and exchange ideas through ‘virtual role-play’ with peers thousands of miles away. In addition, these very same students can help mediate conflict scenarios from the other side of the world. A first real-life case study, observed in April, involved students from Germany and the UK. The participants agreed it was great fun and a good way to tackle the difficult issue of bullying, as well as an excellent opportunity to interact with students from other countries. 
avatar@school screenshot “Bullying is often an underestimated problem in the everyday life of school children”, explains Matteo Bertazzo from the project leader CINECA, the interUniversity Computer Center, “Studies show that this behaviour can be found in nearly every school and that the incidence is considered to be quite high. Bullying itself can take many different forms, including name-calling, spreading rumours and lies, as well as threatening, blackmailing and beating up other children. Conflicts in schools can also include problems such as social exclusion, violence, racism, absenteeism or vandalism.” For avatar@school, the research team develops role-plays based upon conflict scenarios that are worked out by the projects’ partners. Each scenario includes a description of the conflict situation, role instructions for each of the players, such as the bully, the victim, bystanders and teachers, as well as for the mediator. The scenarios and additional material such as guides and manuals for moderators, players and student-mediators, are available on the project website www.avataratschool.eu. The actual role-plays are supervised by a moderator. He or she helps the players explore possible ways of resolving the conflict scenario, either alone or by involving a conflict mediator. Following each role-play, the experience is discussed in an evaluation session. avatar@school is co-financed by the European Commission and is another step in bringing European researchers closer and working in partnership together. The project partners are Cineca (Italy), Actionwork (UK), Zepf (Germany), Associazione Equilibrio (Italy), Sant Pere de Ribes Municipality (Spain), and Project Wolf (Romania). Matteo Bertazzo will present avatar@school in the session on Second Life Learning Experiences which will take place on Thursday, December 4th, from 16:15 – 17:30. More information
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Virtual Role Play Games can be a powerful tool to help prevent bullying in schools. 