Collaborative Research: Coupling Conversational Interactivity with Multimedia in Support of Physics Learning

各种各样的接口已经被用来使学生能够与学习技术进行交互。除了点击之外，文本和各种媒体也是常用的。然而，这些技术很少尝试提供类似于两个人之间的对话的界面。在卡内基梅隆大学人机交互研究所的工作的基础上，我们已经应用了这样一个对话界面，以提高物理教学，并将其纳入物理教学网络咨询（途径），一个环境，已被证明是有效的物理教师教育。 该项目正在扩展这种独特的学习环境;正式研究学生在环境中的学习;并通过这项研究建立专门针对这种新的计算机与学生互动模式的设计原则。CMU的合成面试（SI）通过一个人的视频和一个高度可靠的自然语言界面的组合，为用户提供了一种对话互动的感觉。在这个项目中，SI系统将与其他媒体紧密集成，如视频，文本，动画，插图和模拟。 其结果将给学生的印象是一个人谁是直接与他们交谈，并解释复杂的概念与高度互动的说明媒体。我们的假设是，SI与其他交互式多媒体的组合将创建一个系统，将提高学生对物理主题的理解。 这一假设将在本项目的研究部分得到严格检验。可以想象当SI软件与屏幕上的其他演示耦合时，学习可以以多种方式进行。屏幕上的人可以参考其他对象，指导学生在继续任何其他努力之前与这些对象交互，并直接帮助学生学习。因此，学习环境由系统严格控制。 控制也可能相当宽松。 屏幕上的人可以推荐但不要求其他学习演示的操作，或者只是指出它们是可用的。目前，用于这种类型的交互的软件，特别是包括对话模式，是不可用的。因此，没有研究可以帮助学习技术的开发人员知道什么类型的耦合最适合改善学习。本研究将探讨什么样的整合模式最能有效地为学生提供物理概念学习的支架，鼓励学生反思自己的学习，以及促进知识向物理学习的转移。

A variety of interfaces have been used to enable students to interact with learning technologies. In addition to point and click, text and various media are in common use. However, these technologies seldom attempt to provide an interface that is similar to a conversation between two people. Building on work at the Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute, we have applied such a conversational interface to the enhancement of physics teaching and incorporated it into the Physics Teaching Web Advisory (Pathway), an environment which has proven effective in physics teacher education. This project is extending this unique learning environment; formally studying student learning within the environment; and establishing, through this research, design principles which are specifically focused on this new mode of computer-student interaction. CMU's Synthetic Interview (SI) provides the user with the feeling of a conversational interaction through a combination of a video of a person and a highly reliable natural language interface. During this project the SI system will be tightly integrated with other media such as video, text, animations, illustrations, and simulations. The result will give the students the impression of a person who is talking directly to them and explaining complex concepts with highly interactive illustrative media. Our hypothesis is that the combination of the SI with other interactive multimedia will create a system that will improve student understanding of topics in physics. This hypothesis will be rigorously tested in the research component of this project. One can imagine a variety of ways in which learning can proceed when the SI software is coupled to other presentations on the screen. The on-screen person can refer to other objects, direct a student to interact with these objects before continuing with any other effort, and help the student directly with his/her learning. Thus, the learning environment is tightly controlled by the system. The control could also be rather loose. The on-screen person can recommend but not require actions with other learning presentations or simply point out that they are available. At present, software for this type of interaction, particularly including the conversational mode, is not available. Thus, no research is available to help developers of learning technologies know what type of coupling is best for improvement of learning. This research will investigate what types of integrations are most effective in providing scaffolding for student learning of physics concepts, for encouraging students to reflect on their learning, and for enhancing transfer of knowledge to the learning of physics.