SGER: Multicultural Story Listening Systems

SGER：多元文化故事聆听系统

• 批准号: 0538610
• 负责人: Justine Cassell
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-07-15 至 2006-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0538610&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SGER; Multicultural; Story; Listening; Systems

From mathematics word problems to great literature to science texts, being able to read and write is of paramount importance to academic success. In addition, with the Federal mandate of "no child left behind" an increasing national priority is learning objectives that prepare students to do well on national standardized tests, and many of these learning objectives rely on literacy skills. Yet literacy remains a critical unsolved issue in our educational system, with national test scores showing that non-white children (e.g., African Americans and Hispanics) still score well below their Caucasian counterparts. Increasingly, approaches to this problem derive from the recognition that primary school education is based on a set of mainstream oral practices and literacy-preparation skills. Because many children do not share the same cultural experiences typical of mainstream culture, educational practitioners have applied a cultural-historical approach to identify common characteristics of ethnic groups, and then designed cultural supports for literacy learning by children of diverse backgrounds. But while classroom practice has been influenced by this approach, and training programs for parents have been instituted along these lines, it has been rare to see technological learning environments that leverage diversity in any but the most superficial ways (for example identical content characters with different skin color, or content based on traditional associations such as the Anancy myths). The PI believes she can do much better. To this end, in the current project she will first conduct an in-depth investigation into African-American peer-oriented oral language and literacy practices, in order to understand how cultural practices support individual learning and development in this population. Using these findings, she will then design a virtual peer that engages in authentic cultural practices with African-American children as a bridge to school-based literacy. As the technology is developed, the PI will bring it into classrooms and community centers, formatively evaluating and iteratively redesigning as necessary until the virtual peer is capable of being like African-American children in important ways, can exploit that affinity to establish rapport, and can leverage this rapport and linguistic interaction to help the child acquire literacy skills. Project outcomes will include a rich comparative description of the language and nonverbal practices of African-American and Caucasian children in peer-emergent literacy interaction, a set of behaviors that allow a virtual human to establish rapport with users (including local-level moment-by-moment interactional behaviors and larger scale culturally specific practices), and a Flash virtual peer and set of virtual peer behaviors that have been shown to improve literacy in the children interacting with the virtual peer, both for Standard American English (SAE) speakers and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) speakers. A summative evaluation will address transfer from interaction with the virtual peer to other standard literacy contexts and tests. Broader Impacts: This project addresses fundamental issues relating to acquisition of literacy skills by young children who are members of an underserved population, and will lead to new technology for improving their literacy readiness. The PI will pursue an innovative program of dissemination of results and research practices that involves undergraduates from HBCUs, local schools with high populations of African Americans, and local churches and community centers, in order to broaden in the short term participation by African-American undergraduates in the engineering research behind this project and in the longer term participation in STEM by young African-American school children.

从数学应用题到伟大的文学作品再到科学课本，会读会写对学术成功至关重要。此外，由于联邦政府的“不让一个孩子掉队”的任务，越来越多的国家优先考虑的是学习目标，为学生在国家标准化考试中取得好成绩做好准备，而这些学习目标中的许多依赖于识字技能。然而，识字在我们的教育系统中仍然是一个关键的悬而未决的问题，全国考试成绩表明，非白人儿童(例如，非裔美国人和西班牙裔儿童)的得分仍然远远低于高加索儿童。越来越多地，解决这一问题的办法源于这样一种认识，即小学教育是基于一套主流的口语练习和识字准备技能。由于许多儿童不具有主流文化的典型文化体验，教育实践者采用文化-历史方法来确定族裔群体的共同特征，然后为不同背景的儿童的识字学习设计文化支持。但是，尽管课堂实践受到了这种方法的影响，针对家长的培训计划也沿着这种思路建立起来，但很少看到技术学习环境以最肤浅的方式利用多样性(例如，相同的内容字符，不同的肤色，或者基于传统联想的内容，如Anancy神话)。私家侦探相信她可以做得更好。为此，在目前的项目中，她将首先对非裔美国人面向同龄人的口语和识字做法进行深入调查，以了解文化做法如何支持这一群体中的个人学习和发展。利用这些发现，她将设计一个虚拟同伴，与非裔美国儿童一起参与真实的文化实践，作为通向以学校为基础的扫盲的桥梁。随着这项技术的发展，PI将把它带入教室和社区中心，根据需要进行形式化评估和迭代重新设计，直到虚拟同伴能够在重要方面像非裔美国儿童一样，能够利用这种亲和力建立融洽关系，并能够利用这种融洽和语言互动来帮助儿童获得识字技能。项目成果将包括对非洲裔美国人和高加索儿童在同伴新兴识字互动中的语言和非语言实践的丰富比较描述，一套允许虚拟人与用户建立融洽关系的行为(包括当地层面的即时互动行为和更大规模的特定文化实践)，以及Flash虚拟同伴和一组已被证明提高与虚拟同伴互动的儿童的识字能力，无论是说标准美国英语(SAE)还是说非裔美国白话(AAVE)的儿童。总结性评估将涉及从与虚拟同伴的互动转移到其他标准识字背景和测试的问题。更广泛的影响：该项目解决与服务不足人口中的幼儿获得识字技能有关的基本问题，并将导致采用新技术来改善他们的识字准备。国际和平研究所将推行一项传播成果和研究实践的创新计划，让来自HBCU的本科生、当地非裔美国人人口众多的学校、当地教堂和社区中心参与进来，以便在短期内扩大非裔本科生对该项目背后的工程研究的参与，并在长期内扩大非裔美国学童对STEM的参与。