SBIR Phase I: Improving Children's Motivation, Self-Efficacy, Science Learning and Reading Proficiency

SBIR第一期项目的更广泛/商业影响是智能辅导系统的潜力，它可以提高年轻学习者的科学动机和成就，并提高他们流利的阅读和理解能力。因此，这项创新解决了提高我国学校学生科学学习和阅读能力的关键国家需求，因为国家教育进步评估表明，大多数四年级、八年级和十二年级学生在标准化测试中既不精通科学，也不精通阅读。因此，这项创新旨在为教师提供一种方便、负担得起且高效的学习工具，以提高学生在科学和阅读方面的参与度、积极性和学习能力。这些项目的商业化计划旨在通过现有渠道支持创新在美国和全球的学校广泛传播，从而增加广泛社会影响的潜力。该项目旨在开发并演示智能辅导系统的可行性，该系统将帮助儿童通过与虚拟导师的对话互动来学习科学推理和理解科学文本。该项目的成功成果将带来新的见解，并为如何将先进的人类语言技术、角色动画技术和计算机视觉技术结合并集成到智能辅导系统中提供科学知识，以优化年轻学习者的参与度、动机、自我效能和学习。该项目基于对儿童如何通过多媒体环境中的社会互动进行学习的理论和科学研究，以及项目组之前通过与虚拟科学导师的对话提高儿童学习科学的动机和科学成就的研究。SBIR第一期项目的成功成果将通过展示跟踪和解释学生语言的智能辅导系统的可行性和前景，扩展先前的研究并推进科学知识。眼球运动提高科学学习、口语阅读流畅性和阅读理解能力。

This SBIR Phase I project's broader/commercial impact is the potential of the intelligent tutoring system to increase young learners' science motivation and achievement and to improve their fluent reading and comprehension skills. The innovation thus addresses a critical national need to improve students' science learning and reading proficiency in our nation's schools, since national assessments of educational progress indicate that the majority of fourth, eighth and twelfth grade students are not proficient in either science or reading on standardized tests. The innovation is thus designed to provide teachers with an accessible, affordable and highly effective learning tool that will improve their students' engagement, motivation and learning in both science and reading. The projects' commercialization plan is designed to support widespread distribution of the innovation to schools in the U.S. and globally through existing channels, thus increasing the potential for broad societal impact.The project aims to develop and demonstrate the feasibility of an intelligent tutoring system that will help children learn to reason about science and comprehend science texts through conversational interactions with a virtual tutor. Successful outcomes of the project will lead to new insights and contribute to scientific knowledge about how advanced human language technologies, character animation technologies and computer vision technologies can be combined and integrated into intelligent tutoring systems to optimize young learners' engagement, motivation, self-efficacy and learning. The project is based on theory and scientific research on how children learn through social interaction in multimedia environments, and prior research by the project team that improved children's motivation to learn science and their science achievement through conversations with a virtual science tutor. Successful outcomes of the SBIR Phase I project will extend this prior research and advance scientific knowledge by demonstrating the feasibility and promise of an intelligent tutoring system that tracks and interprets students? eye movements to improve science learning, oral reading fluency and reading comprehension.