Research
Adventure Rock is the subject of a year-long joint research project between CBBC and the University of Westminster, funded by BBC Future Media and Technology, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which began in July 2007, and aims to look at how children engage with virtual worlds. It is the first time the BBC has run a structured commissioning round calling for research in partnership with academia. Adventure Rock will be studied from both an audience and producer’s point of view, with the hope of finding out how children create imaginary places and spaces in the real world, how children wish Adventure Rock to develop, how producers should adapt the way they engage with children around the Adventure Rock ‘brand’ (which includes the service, website, message boards etc.) and what parents think of Adventure Rock (specifically whether the service changes their perception of Adventure Rock and/or virtual worlds in general).
The project will also study why the BBC chose to make Adventure Rock a closed world where users' avatars cannot meet or communicate, and what children think of this.
Research workshops have already taken place in December 2007 and January 2008, with 75 participants aged 7-11 years, in five mixed socio-economic and ethnic groups located in Scotland, Wales, N Ireland, and England. At this workshop the children were asked to talk about imaginary spaces and places, and suggest what they would like to see in a virtual world. Six weeks later, during which the children were asked to explore Adventure Rock, a second workshop was held in which the children made creative suggestions about what they would add or remove from this virtual place. Parents were asked to complete a questionnaire regarding their feelings about their children participating in this virtual world. In addition, a researcher spent time observing the producers and hosts of CBBC, completing a detailed research diary, which was then used to note congruencies and disparities between producers' expectations and children's own responses.
The findings have been presented at the Conference on Virtual Worlds for Children, on 23 May 2008.
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