Using Storytelling to Teach Children Biodiversity

Abstract

This paper is about improving children’s learning of biodiversity and preservation of the environment through interactive storytelling and gaming. We conducted a user study with a between-subjects design with eighty-three children aged 6 to 10 years from the South of Brazil. We analysed the role of the agent’s embodiment (embodied vs not embodied), the presence (or absence) of storytelling, and children’s previous knowledge of biodiversity, in children’s performance and engagement with the application. Our results demonstrate that: a) children seeing familiar biodiversity were more engaged with our system than those seeing non-familiar biodiversity, and b) children with a higher level of knowledge (3 rd and 4 th school years) performed better in the species identification task than those with a lower level of knowledge (1 st and 2 nd school years).