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

该项目解决了使辅导系统和其他学习技术中使用的头像更具吸引力和更有效的学习指南的挑战。一个焦点是使化身的动作更逼真;第二个焦点是理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相结合。 化身手势的设计借鉴了关于手势在沟通中的作用的文献、关于扎根和具身认知的文献以及关于数学的文献。 这个Cyberlearning的重点：转变教育探索建议是设计化身手势，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准则将为跨学科内容领域扩展化身的手势功能奠定基础。研究的重点是如何自动制作具有逼真品质的化身，以及在何种条件下向教学化身添加手势可以促进参与和学习。化身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，学习者可能会被没有情感的化身所拖延，而且化身技术还没有像好的导师和教师那样将手势和“说话”结合起来，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，使学习者更容易和更愿意与他们接触，并赋予化身以与他们所表达的概念一致的方式做手势的能力。在解决这些问题时存在各种各样的挑战，一些是技术性的，一些是社会性的，还有一些是认知性的。该项目团队正在解决所有三种类型的问题，致力于设计化身的原则，这些化身可以更自然地移动和参与，并且可以在解释困难内容时像人们一样做出手势。以促进持续参与和学习的方式加强计算机与人之间的互动，将提高智能辅导系统和其他跨学科和跨年龄学习者的学习技术的有效性。

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.