Technology-enhanced role-play for social and emotional learning context – Intercultural empathy

Role-play can be a powerful educational tool, especially when dealing with social or ethical issues. However, while other types of educational activity have been routinely technology-enhanced for some time, the specific problem of supporting educational role-play with technology has only begun to be tackled recently. Within the eCIRCUS project we have designed a framework for technology-enhanced role-play with the aim of educating adolescents about intercultural empathy. This work was influenced by related fields such as intelligent virtual agents, interactive narrative and pervasive games. In this paper, we will describe the different components of our role-play technology by means of a prototype implementation of this technology, the ORIENT showcase. Furthermore we will present results of our evaluation of ORIENT.

► Role-play can help in teaching intercultural empathy.
► Educational role-play can be enhanced through technology.
► Multimodal interaction devices can enhance teamwork.