ATTAC-L: A modeling language for educational virtual scenarios in the context of preventing cyber bullying

Abstract

Cyber bullying (bullying via electronic communication tools) is a relatively recent phenomenon that especially occurs among early adolescents. As cyber bullying may have a serious impact on the mental (and physical) well-being of victims, it is important to develop effective evidence-based interventions against cyber bullying. The “Friendly ATTAC”-project has the aim to develop so-called virtual interactive scenarios (i.e. digital games) to modify behavior patterns associated with cyber bullying among youngsters. The scenarios will be developed during brainstorming sessions involving people from the different disciplines and with different backgrounds, but specialized in the domain of cyber bullying. To allow this non-technical people to specify the virtual interactive scenarios that should be developed, we have developed a domain specific modeling language that allow them to do so in an intuitive and close to natural language way. This paper presents this language in an informal way.