November 6, 2007 at 9am in Halligan Hall, room H-106.
Virtual Forum Theater: Creating and sharing drama to resolve conflicts
This research studied how Virtual Forum Theater (VFT) extends and
augments face-to-face dramatic activities for improving argumentation
skills, expressive fluency and social conscious awareness in
disenfranchised children and youth.
Virtual Forum Theater is a computer-based learning experience that
allows face-to-face, computer, and multimedia-based drama. VFT has
three parts: VFT the toolset, VFT the creative activity, and VFT the
performance. The VFT toolset is a multimedia tool for creation of
dramatic plays using audio, and images that enables participatory and
collaborative digital playmaking through the Internet. The VFT
activity or process is the collaborative process of creating a digital
play, and consists of much more than the VFT toolset, including
dramatic exercises involving group bonding, social awareness and
Improv skills. A VFT performance refers to the activity of watching
and responding to a previously created digital play. In this thesis,
VFT refers to the total sum of all of these aspects, including
computer tools, group activity to create a digital play, and digital
performance with accompanying group discussion.
VFT takes its inspiration from many sources, including Boal's Theater
of the Oppressed (1983) (TO), more specifically Forum Theater (FT).
VFT began as an attempt to create an experience similar to FT on the
Internet, accessible to youth. As this study shows, VFT became more
than this; there is evidence that group discussion and facilitation
play a greater role than initially thought in creating an educational
VFT experience. Because the target audience was youth and not adult,
the goals diverged somewhat from those of TO and FT; I view VFT as an
educational tool as well as a dramatic tool.
Primary educational goals of VFT include both argumentation skills and
expressive fluency in disenfranchised children and youth in developing
countries such as Brazil. It is a unique educational software
environment that supports the creation of original dramatic scripts
between the participants through free on-line dramatic interactions.
These online interactions are augmented by group activities aimed at
increasing participants' skills in arguing about issues and expressing
their point of view.
This thesis presents VFT, its theoretical foundations, and three
experiences in which VFT was used with underserved children and youth.
One in Somerville-Ma-USA and the others in Salvador-Bahia-BRAZIL.
Through these experiences, children learned about technology and
artistic expression and improved social awareness and argumentation
abilities. The VFT was revised according to participants' usage and
feedback in each study.
Advisors: Alva Couch – Computer Science
Marina Bers – Child Development
Downing Cless – Dance and Drama
Edith Ackerman – Outside member affiliated to MIT and UNISI.
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