Designing Interactive Contextual Cues for Children's Video-Stimulated Writing

Supporting children's writing activities is a primary concern in elementary-school grades. Using embodied means such as visual stimuli through pictures or motion pictures has been shown effective in supporting children's writing. To guide children during the writing activity, contextual cues are usually provided in face-to-face classroom practice with interactive instruction from a teacher. This paper explores the design of an interactive online system for video-scaffolded writing with contextual cues. In our online study with 13 children, we explored two approaches to designing contextual cues: temporally situated and visually situated. Participants were divided into two groups, each using a web-based interface to watch an animated video and write the story guided by one of the cue designs. We analyzed the children's writing process and outcome in both groups. Our results show that temporally situated cues support a stronger overall story structure, while visually situated cues support more descriptive and interpretive writing.