Bridging the Achievement Gap with Authorable Virtual Peers

与权威的虚拟同行缩小成就差距

• 批准号: 1129360
• 负责人: Justine Cassell
• 金额: $ 15.68万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-10-25 至 2013-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1129360&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Bridging; Achievement; Gap; Authorable; Virtual

This project will implement and evaluate technological supports for African-American Vernacular English(AAVE)-speaking children to learn Standard American English while engaging in problem-based scientific inquiry. The technology consists of virtual peers that collaborate with children to solve a bridge-building problem, while scaffolding the notion that different kinds of language are appropriate for different conversational contexts. The work relies on the recognition that primary school education is based on a set of mainstream oral practices and literacy-preparation skills, and yet all children do not share the same cultural experiences typical of mainstream culture, nor come to school speaking the same dialect of English. Similarly, while traditional science classrooms have emphasized a particular style of scientific discourse, not all children come to school with the mastery of these discourse styles. Scientific inquiry is at the heart of the contemporary science classroom but it is usually defined according to a specific cultural tradition that privileges individual opinion, 'talking back' to the teacher, and criticism of others; a tradition that may not be shared by all students, and which may have ramifications for science achievement among diverse populations. A unique approach for integrating cultural authenticity into learning technology will be pursued: (1) carrying out an in-depth investigation into AAVE peer-oriented language and nonverbal communicative behaviors. The corpus of data obtained from this study will be shared with all interested researchers via the Penn Linguistic Data Consortium; (2) Two technological innovations will extend prior work on virtual peers so as to make possible the current work: (a) PIPER, a new platform for rapid prototyping and implementation of virtual peers so that each of the virtual peers does not require extensive re-implementation as it did in our Flash days; (b) AVP, an authoring system for virtual peers so that children themselves can program the virtual peer as a way of actively engaging with the technology, with code-switching and with collaborative science inquiry and then description of that inquiry to a teacher; (3) evaluating the technologies with respect to their role in improving children?s use of SAE, their educational self-efficacy, and their learning gains in second grade standardized science measures.The broader significance and important of the work lies in: (1) the potential to substantially increase access to reading, writing, and science literacy for under-served, at-risk children, and to thereby decrease the Black-White achievement gap; (2) technological innovation that will allow other researchers to quickly prototype and implement virtual peers and pedagogical agents that speak different dialects and language, and that can be programmed by their designers, and by their users; (3) an innovative program of dissemination of results and research practices that involves publication and presentation of results, sharing the corpus of data via the Penn Linguistic Data Consortium, but also the involvement of local schools with high populations of African-Americans, local churches and community centers, and informal education institutions such as science centers and children's museums.

该项目将对非裔美国人的英语（AAVE）的儿童实施和评估技术支持，以学习标准的美国英语，同时从事基于问题的科学探究。该技术由虚拟同龄人组成，这些虚拟同龄人与孩子合作解决了一个桥梁建设问题，同时脚手架认为不同种类的语言适合不同的对话环境的观念。这项工作依赖于这样的认识，即小学教育是基于一系列主流的口头习惯和扫盲技巧，但是所有儿童都没有分享主流文化的典型文化经验，也没有来学校讲的英语方言。同样，尽管传统的科学教室强调了一种特殊的科学话语风格，但并非所有孩子都以掌握这些话语风格来上学。科学探究是当代科学课堂的核心，但通常是根据特定的文化传统来定义的，该传统使个人意见，与老师“回话”以及对他人的批评。所有学生可能并非分享的传统，并且可能对不同人群的科学成就产生影响。将采用一种将文化真实性整合到学习技术中的独特方法：（1）对面向AAVE的同伴语言和非语言交流行为进行深入研究。从这项研究获得的数据语料库将通过Penn语言数据联盟与所有感兴趣的研究人员共享； （2）两项技术创新将扩大对虚拟同行的先前工作，以使当前的工作成为可能：（a）Piper，这是一个快速原型和实施虚拟同行的新平台，以使每个虚拟同行都不需要像我们在闪光日内那样进行广泛的重新实现； （b）AVP是虚拟同行的创作系统，以便孩子们自己可以通过代码转换和协作科学询问进行积极参与该技术的方式编程，以便将该询问的询问描述给老师； （3）评估技术在改善儿童使用SAE，教育自我效能感以及他们在二年级标准化科学方面的学习中的作用方面的作用。工作的较广泛的意义和重要意义在于：（1）潜在的潜力，可以实质上增加对阅读，写作和科学素材的访问，并降低了在这里，并降低了危险的儿童，并降低了危险的儿童，并降低了黑人的成就， （2）技术创新将使其他研究人员能够快速原型，并实施说不同的方言和语言的虚拟同行和教学代理，并且可以由其设计师以及用户对其进行编程； （3）一项创新的结果和研究实践的创新计划，涉及成果出版和呈现，通过宾夕法尼亚州语言数据联盟共享数据库，以及在非裔美国人，当地教会和社区中心和非正式教育机构以及科学教育机构等本地学校的参与，例如科学教育机构。