SBIR Phase II: A System for Enhancing Metacognitive and Problem-Solving Abilities in Engineers

SBIR 第二阶段：增强工程师元认知和解决问题能力的系统

• 批准号: 2128721
• 负责人: Robyn Allen
• 金额: $ 100万
• 依托单位: Central Inventions, Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2128721&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; System; Enhancing

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project involves both reduced costs for technology companies as well as increased access to cutting-edge engineering jobs for people from all backgrounds. Commercializing this product will provide the market with an innovative, automated solution that reduces the time hiring managers spend on recruiting and growing the best candidates. Until now, metacognitive skill development has been the purview of in-person mentors – a practice that provides fewer on-ramps into engineering careers for individuals from backgrounds historically underrepresented in technology as they often lack access to in-person engineer mentors. A scalable system which delivers metacognitive benefits to users in an automated way may create greater access to technology education by reducing the need for in-person mentorship. The product will also enable job seekers to enhance their engineering potential by strengthening the "hard to teach" practices which distinguish professional engineers from aspiring ones. Overall, the product commercialized during Phase II seeks to increase broader participation in engineering careers and a more equitable set of hiring practices in technology companies.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project brings cutting-edge Cognitive Science to bear on the problems of manual candidate screening and ongoing employee upskilling. For the first-time, it marries an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and opens the door to build talent pipelines for individuals whose metacognitive traits match closely with the needs of tech employers. The proposed project combines key advances in the field of Cognitive Science with best practices in software design in order to create novel user interactions inside a Computer-Based Learning Environment (CBLE). Objectives include: 1) collecting microdata (also called "trace data") from user interactions to make automated inferences about the user's metacognitive traits and 2) creating inputs designed to foster metacognitive growth. Correlating real-time trace data with metacognitive ability is a new area of research enabled only recently by the increased adoption of CBLEs. The proposed project contributes to the fields of Cognitive Science and Human-Computer Interaction by validating novel methods measuring metacognition against existing static look-back techniques. The project also pioneers new modes of delivering personalized metacognitive growth through CBLE interaction.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）II期项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力既涉及降低技术公司的成本，又增加了从各个背景的人们获得尖端工程工作的机会。将该产品商业化将为市场提供创新的自动化解决方案，以减少招聘经理在招募和发展最佳候选人方面花费的时间。到目前为止，元认知技能发展一直是面对面导师的范围 - 这种做法为从历史上缺乏技术人数不足的个人提供了较少的跨入工程职业，因为他们常常无法获得现场工程。可扩展的系统以自动化的方式为用户带来元认知益处，可以通过减少对面对面指导的需求来创造更多的技术教育访问。该产品还将使求职者能够增强其工程潜力，从而增强“难以教学”的实践，从而将专业工程师与有抱负的工程师区分开来。总体而言，在第二阶段中商业化的产品旨在增加广播公司的参与工程职业和技术公司中更公平的招聘实践。这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）II阶段项目将尖端的认知科学带来了手动候选人筛选和正在进行的员工的问题。首先，它将智能辅导系统（ITS）与申请人跟踪系统（ATS）结合在一起，并为元认知特征与科技雇主的需求紧密相匹配的个人打开了大门，以建造人才管道。拟议的项目将认知科学领域的关键进展与软件设计领域的最佳实践结合在一起，以在基于计算机的学习环境（CBLE）中创建新颖的用户交互。目的包括：1）从用户交互中收集微数据（也称为“跟踪数据”），以使有关用户元认知性状的自动信息和2）创建旨在促进元认知增长的输入。将实时痕量数据与元认知能力相关联是仅通过增加CBLE的采用而实现了一个新的研究领域。拟议的项目通过验证针对现有静态外观技术的元认知的新方法来为认知科学和人类计算机相互作用的领域做出了贡献。该项目还开创了通过CBLE互动提供个性化元认知增长的新模式。该奖项反映了NSF的坚定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准，被认为是通过评估而被视为珍贵的支持。