EXP: Collaborative Research: A System of Animation Gestures for Effective Teaching Avatars

该项目解决了使教学系统和其他学习技术中使用的化身更具吸引力和更有效的学习指南的挑战。一个重点是让化身的动作更逼真；第二个重点是了解如何有效地将表示友好的手势与用于促进概念学习的手势结合起来。化身手势的设计借鉴了关于手势在交流中的作用的文献，关于基础和具体化认知的文献，以及关于数学的文献。这项网络学习：转变教育探索计划的重点是设计化身手势来促进数学等价的学习。分析这些手势的效果并提取手势设计的初步指导原则，将为在学科内容领域扩展化身的手势能力奠定基础。研究重点是如何自动制作具有逼真品质的化身，以及在什么情况下向教学化身添加手势来促进参与和学习。化身被广泛用于学习技术中，以指导学习者的行动并提供建议。但是，没有感情的虚拟形象可能会让学习者望而却步，而且虚拟形象技术还没有像好的导师和教师那样将手势和“说话”结合在一起，因为他们试图帮助学习者学习困难的概念。这个项目解决了这两个问题--赋予化身足够的个性，以便学习者更容易、更愿意与他们互动，并赋予化身以与他们所表达的概念一致的方式打手势的能力。在解决这些问题方面存在各种挑战，一些是技术方面的，一些是社会方面的，还有一些是认知方面的。项目团队正在解决所有这三种类型的问题，致力于制定虚拟形象的设计原则，这些虚拟形象的移动和互动更自然，并且可以像人们解释困难内容时那样做出手势。以促进持续参与和学习的方式加强计算机和人之间的互动，将提高跨学科和跨学习者年龄的智能辅导系统和其他学习技术的有效性。

This project addresses the challenge of making avatars used in tutoring systems and other learning technologies more engaging and more effective learning guides. One focus is on making the movements of an avatar more lifelike; a second focus is on understanding how to effectively integrate gestures indicating friendliness with gestures used for promoting concept learning. Design of avatar gestures draws on the literature on the roles of gesturing in communication, the literature on grounded and embodied cognition, and the literature on mathematics. The focus of this Cyberlearning: Transforming Education Exploration proposal is on designing avatar gestures for promoting learning of mathematical equivalence. Analysis of the effects of those gestures and extraction of preliminary guidelines for gesture design will lay the groundwork for extending gesturing capabilities of avatars across disciplinary content areas. Research focuses on how to automatically animate an avatar with life-like qualities and the conditions under which adding gestures to a teaching avatar promotes engagement and learning.Avatars are used extensively in learning technologies to guide learners' actions and to provide advice. But learners can be put off by avatars that are emotionless, and avatars technology does not yet combine gesturing and "talking" in the way good tutors and teachers do as they are trying to help learners learn difficult concepts. This project addresses both of those issues -- giving avatars enough personality so that learners will engage with them more readily and willingly and giving avatars the capability of gesturing in ways that are congruent with the concepts they are expressing. There are a variety of challenges in addressing these issues, some technical, some social, and some cognitive. The project team is addressing all three types of issues, working towards design principles for avatars that move and engage more naturally and that can gesture as people do when explaining difficult content. Enhancing the interactions between computers and people in ways that promote both sustained engagement and learning will improve the effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems and other learning technologies across disciplines and across the ages of learners.