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: 0735664
• 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: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-02-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0735664&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.

该项目将实施和评估技术支持非洲裔美国本土英语（AAVE）为母语的儿童学习标准美国英语，同时从事基于问题的科学探究。这项技术由虚拟同伴组成，他们与孩子们合作解决桥梁建设问题，同时支持不同语言适用于不同对话环境的概念。这项工作所依据的认识是，小学教育是以一套主流的口语练习和识字准备技能为基础的，但并非所有儿童都有主流文化所特有的相同文化经历，也不是所有儿童都说同一种英语方言上学。同样，虽然传统的科学课堂强调一种特定的科学话语风格，但并不是所有的孩子都能掌握这些话语风格。科学探究是当代科学课堂的核心，但它通常是根据一个特定的文化传统，特权个人意见，“回嘴”的老师，和他人的批评定义的;一个传统，可能不是所有的学生共享，这可能有不同人群之间的科学成就的影响。本研究将寻求一种独特的方法，将文化真实性融入学习技术：（1）对AAVE同伴导向语言和非语言交际行为进行深入调查。从这项研究中获得的数据语料库将通过宾夕法尼亚大学语言数据联盟与所有感兴趣的研究人员共享;（2）两项技术创新将扩展先前关于虚拟同行的工作，以便使当前的工作成为可能：（a）PIPER，一个新的平台，用于快速原型设计和实现虚拟对等点，使每个虚拟对等点不需要大量的重新设计，（B）AVP，一个虚拟同伴的创作系统，这样孩子们自己就可以对虚拟同伴进行编程，作为一种积极参与技术、代码转换和协作科学探究的方式，然后向老师描述这种探究;（3）评估技术在改善儿童方面的作用？这项工作的更广泛的意义和重要性在于：（1）有可能大大增加服务不足的高危儿童的阅读、写作和科学素养，从而缩小黑人与白人的成就差距;（2）技术创新，使其他研究人员能够快速原型化和实现虚拟同伴和教学代理人，他们说不同的方言和语言，并且可以由他们的设计者和他们的用户编程;（3）传播成果和研究实践的创新计划，包括成果的出版和展示，通过宾夕法尼亚语言数据联盟共享数据库，以及非洲裔美国人人口众多的当地学校的参与，地方教堂和社区中心，以及非正式教育机构，如科学中心和儿童博物馆。