Playing Stories in Virtual Worlds: Exploring the Effects of a Storytelling
Strategy for Self-expression
Abstract: Researches on self-expression indicate storytelling as a strategy that offers students an
opportunity to tell their ideas and thoughts, and to express their emotions and intentions. In the
recent years, storytelling emerges out of diversity with the development of technology. This
research conducted an experiment research by applying a technology-supported storytelling (TSST)
strategy in virtual world, to explore the effects on elementary students’ self-expression ability. This
study focuses on technology-supported storytelling strategy as an alternative method to promote
self-expression. The result shows there is an increasing in self-expression of extraversion students
while a decreasing of introversion students. Further development of TSST may need to provide
more collaboration work to help the introversion group easy to get used to the new environment
and build their relationship with others, and overcome shyness or nervous when communicated
with others.
Introduction
Educational potentials of virtual worlds are discussed and explained by considerable researches and
practices (Dede, 1992; Hew & Cheung, 2010). Virtual worlds are computer-simulated online environments
involving large numbers of people interacting through avatars (Bishop, 2009; Bell, 2008; Castronova, 2004). Virtual
worlds within animated avatar and high realistic environment can motivate learners to engage in educational
inquires and learning activities, and able to develop powerful identities, promote collaborative learning and facilitate
21st century skills (Barab et al, 2005; Dalgarno, 2002; Dickey, 2003; Dickey, 2005).
Communication skill, one of 21st century skills, is highlighted in digital era. Self-expression skill plays an
important role in a successful communication, which represents an ability to convey one’s own emotion or to
express one’s own intention (Kim & Lee, 2004). Self-expression serves as the basis for socialization and contributes
to better understanding in diversity culture (Kim, 2004). Improving students’ self-expression skill in diversity era is
significant to cultivate communication skills. It is a way to help students identify themselves to be better understood
and recognized by others. Previous research on students’ self-expression indicated storytelling as a strategy that
offered students an opportunity to tell their idea and thoughts, express emotion and intention (Harris, 2007; Mason,
1996; Winston, 1999). Self-expression can be promoted through storytelling, especially through personal story
which carry personal experience can reveal the differences and similarities between others (Harris, 2007).
This research conducted an experiment research by applying a technology-supported storytelling (TSST)
strategy (Huang, Baek & Cho, 2012) in virtual world, to explore the effects on elementary students’ self-expression
ability. This study especially focus on whether there is any difference in self-expression skill of students with
different personality traits after using the technology-supported storytelling (TSST) strategy in virtual world.
Literature Review
Trends of Using Virtual worlds in Education
Ko and Rossen (2010) indicated reasons for using the virtual world for educational activities range from the
curiosity of the fancy appearance, and the desire to inject some fun into education, to exploring the virtual
environment and interacting with people and objects, or doing complex simulations in a safe and costless
environment. This process reflected the evolution of implementation of virtual worlds in education, and also
indicated a change and trend of using virtual worlds. That is applying virtual worlds was changing from as a
motivator to an activity-orientated learning environment. Instructional design of activities in virtual worlds
underlying kinds of learning theory or strategies will be the direction of using virtual worlds in education.
Designing pedagogically driven quests, online role playing, synchronous and asynchronous interaction
activities in virtual worlds can engage learners in educational activities (Barab et al., 2005; Dickey, 2005).
Researchers predict that virtual worlds will bring major changes into current instructional paradigms just as the
Internet did in the past (Aldrich, 2009). Teaching and learning in virtual worlds requires a paradigm shift contributed
by educators, researchers, and learners who are involved in and should adapt to the new environment (Dede, 1995;
Smith & Berge, 2009).
There are many examples of the effective use of virtual worlds in all stages of formal education and
training in a variety of subject areas (Dickey, 2011; Samuelson, 2011; Wang et al., 2011). How to use virtual worlds
to promote learning effectively depends on how to design and organize the learning activities in virtual worlds.
Good guidance for using new technologies depends on sincere considerations and guidelines in the process of
instructional design. However, existing instructional methodologies do not adequately address how to design and
deliver learning in the context of mixed reality and virtual reality.
Storytelling Strategy for Self-expression
Koenig and Zorn (2002) summarized the values of storytelling as a teaching-learning approach to facilitate
thinking, to enhance imagination and visualization, to develop appreciation of the beauty and rhythm of the
languages, to support the review and understanding of learning content, to strengthen the creation of caring
communities, and to link theory and practice.
Storytelling as a strategy offer students opportunities to tell their idea and thought, express their emotion
and intention (Harris, 2007; Mason, 1996; Winston, 1999). Through telling a personal story is a way to express
yourself and communicate with others (East et al., 2010). Harris (2007) introduced a Blending Narrative Storytelling
(BNS) strategy, and indicated that Self-expression can be promoted through storytelling, especially through personal
story which carry personal experience can reveal the differences and similarities between others. When stories are
made part of the lesson plan, students can understand information better, and their interest and attention are held
longer (Mason, 1996). A case study from Yu (2011) indicated that the storytelling strategy encouraged student to
connect the learning content to their personal stories, which is a way to make meaning of knowledge, and also a way
to develop the understanding with peers and teachers.
The technology-supported storytelling (TSST) strategy
With the development of technology, the storytelling evolved out different formats, such as visual
storytelling mentioning using images and text to create visual stories (Rifà-Valls, 2011), and digital storytelling, the
prevalent storytelling in the digital era, refers to using computer-based tools to tell stories(Robin, 2013). Since
virtual worlds within animated avatar and high realistic environment, provide a new platform for participants to play
their stories as actor or actress. By telling a story though avatars and communicating with other avatars or virtual
peers, students felt themselves becoming a part of the simulated universe (Metros, 2008; Ryokai, Vaucelle, &
Cassell, 2003).
The technology-supported storytelling (TSST) strategy is a five-phase storytelling instruction applying to a
virtual learning environment, constructs on Merrill's First Principles of Instruction (Merrill, 2002) composed by five
sequential principles correspondingly contains five phases: 1) Topic-centered: Learning content; 2) Activation: Get
involved; 3) Demonstration: Begin a story; 4) Application: Create your story and 5) Integration: Perform your story
(Huang, Baek & Cho, 2012). The TSST strategy contains a series of designed storytelling activities in virtual worlds
by examining and considering the characteristics of virtual world which could be incorporated into storytelling, aim
to provide an innovative instruction to guide teaching and learning in the virtual learning environment.
Method
A sample of 36 elementary grade 6 students from a South Korean elementary school participated in this
first tail study of applying the TSST strategy. There are fifteen female and twenty male students in all. Participants
were taken two surveys in this study: the Five Factor Model Personality Test (OCEAN) used to test the personality
traits of participants in terms of the dimension of extraversion and introversion, and the pre- and post-tests of revised
self-expression scale developed from previous research (Galassi et. al., 1974; Rathus, 1973; Rakos & Schoeder,
1979). The whole study divided into five weeks, each week two hours, and this study is blended of both face-to-face
and online. First week is face-to-face class about course orientation and access to virtual world--Second Life, while
the rest of weeks are online.
Results
This study assumed an increase in the self-expression score and attempts to discover which groups
(extraversion and introversion) show an increase on self-expression score. To obtain basic statistics, means and
standard deviation on the pre and post self-expression test for each extraversion and introversion group were
calculated. An independent t-test procedure was applied to test differences in increases in the self-expression of the
two groups.
In all 35 students participant in personality and self-expression pre- and post- tests, while 6 students data
are incomplete, so 29 students’ data is analyzed in this study. After taking Five Factor Model Personality Test
(OCEAN), in terms of dimension of extraversion and introversion, students are divided into three groups as
extraversion (n=12) ,introversion (n=7) and neither extraversion nor introversion (n=10).
Before the project in virtual world, students took participant in Self-expression Pre-test and after five-week
project by using TSST strategy in Second Life. The mean of self-expression post-test of all participants (M=11.38,
SD=2.46) is a little higher than pre-test (M=11.14, SD=2.53). As to each group, in the introversion group, the mean
of post-test (M=10.00, SD=2.16) was lower than the mean of pre-test (M=10.86, SD=1.86). While in extroversion
group the mean of post-test (M=12.17, SD=2.76) was higher than pre-test (M=11.08, SD=2.78). Then we conduct
an independent T-test to test the increase of self-expression before and after treatment. The variable of increase of
self-expression was obtained by subtracting scores of the pre-test of self-expression test from those of the post selfexpression test. The result shows that the Introversion group decreased 0.57 whereas Extraversion group increased
1.08 in mean.
Discussion
This study does not aim to clarify the causal relationship between technology-supported storytelling
strategy and self-expression. Instead, this study focuses on technology-supported storytelling strategy as an
alternative method to promote self-expression. The result of the data shows that the storytelling activities in virtual
worlds can work on extraversion students but not introversion. The result shows there is an increasing in selfexpression of extraversion students while a decreasing of introversion students. The reason can explained as
extraversion students tend to open to new things, they are easy to receive and more willing to try novel thing, while
the introversion students reluctant to new things and hesitate to act at once. Because of personality traits,
extraversion students are more active in self-expression in different environment even in virtual world.
In this study, the introversion group show a decrease in score of self-expression, which conflict with
research result that virtual environments have the potential to enhance social interaction and support connectedness,
particularly among those individuals who may have difficulty facilitating communication on a face-to-face basis
(Martino, 2007; Katz & Rice, 2002; Woolgar, 2002). Introversion students also have difficult in virtual worlds
expression, even then the anonymity of virtual world, they are hesitate to express themselves. Look back to the
TSST strategy, it is weak in promote a collaboration work in the project while collaborative learning or cooperative
learning was cited by respondents as most often applied to the design of the learning program in virtual worlds. It
would be developed after the students get used to the new environment and build their relationship with other
students and instructor, with the help of virtual world to overcome personal limitation in shyness or nervous when
communicated with others.
Limitations
This is first trial of using the TSST strategy in virtual world to improve self-expression skill, the sample
used in this study with limited size and level. The sample of the study is small which not stand for the whole
situation is. Within this context, this study has a limited generalization of results. However, from the result of this
study, this research indicates some cues for self-expression development in virtual worlds. The reason to this result
can be explained as following.
The designed storytelling strategy in virtual worlds provided an organized procedure to train students.
Students showed great motivation in creating and expressing their stories in virtual worlds, the project (TSST)
strategy probably successfully attracted students with vivid visual and audio of the characteristics of virtual world.
The stimulus (TSST strategy) in this study is not enough to cultivate and improve a habit or skill (self-expression)
especially to the introversion group students, due to the period of time, ways of reinforcement and intensive of
practice. Students create an experience of making a story in virtual world and narrate the stories and experience the
stories of their classmates (Sanchez, 2009), but the learning of how to express is not internalized into existed schema
of students, they may need more practice time to improve meaningful learning of self-expression. Jonassen (2008)
points out that meaningful learning occurs when the media help students to better represent their ideas and to engage
in collaboration. However, in this study, a virtual world in terms of helping the introversion group students in
meaningful learning is not significant. The new learning environment stirs a variation in their mind, but not makes
real meaning of their study of self-expression.
Conclusion
With the characteristic of virtual world, the TSST strategy was developed as an innovative instruction for
the virtual learning environment. With the expectation of using this instruction to improve students’ self-expression
in this study, however the result is limited, but it enlighten us the direction of improving the TSST strategy and
designing activities for better improve self-expression in virtual worlds. Future study need to expand the sample size
and levels, and repeat to implement TSST program to expand the influence of TSST strategy. Further development
of TSST may need to provide more collaboration work to help the introversion group easy to get used to the new
environment and build their relationship with others, and overcome shyness or nervous when communicated with
others.
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