STTR Phase I: Commercializing an intelligent reading tutor for mobile devices

这个STTRI期项目将把阅读智能导师商业化，并将其从基于大学的研究环境转化为商业可行的产品。第一阶段将集中于最终确定技术创新以及测试和强化软件以供商业使用的研究目标。这款智能导师的一个独特功能是其内容创作能力，为教师和支持人员提供创建阅读材料的能力，以最大限度地满足他们的学习者的需求，而无需了解任何编程、语言学或语音识别知识。这位导师的另一项创新是在阅读时提供纠错和促进流利性的能力。这个项目最初的影响是使用智能家教提高儿童的识字能力，这种智能家教在当今的移动设备上是可以买到的，并且易于使用和创作个性化内容。更广泛的影响是利用和设计适合成人学习者的软件。在当今的全球高科技经济中，识字本身比以往任何时候都更加重要。这个STTR项目的拟议研究将使用一个个性化的、可访问的、移动的、适合所有用户的环境来解决所有年龄段的识字问题。这个小企业技术转移第一阶段项目将专注于基于研究的阅读智能导师的商业化。两个技术障碍是用户界面(UI)和提供流畅的语音识别。开发依赖计算机提供指导的内容的主要困难之一是为每个单词提供所需的发音信息。一个至关重要的成功是，阅读导师能够让教师和其他人在不需要了解任何编程、语言学或语音识别的情况下为系统创建内容。另一个至关重要的成功是，教师能够使用括号和英语字母表中的正常26个字符，为词典外的单词指定定制的单词发音。在商业市场上，没有任何阅读流利程序将这一技术过程与“教师友好”的用户界面相结合。这一创新使教师能够真正为学习者在阅读智能导师中创建和添加相关阅读材料。这项建议的研究目标是解决技术障碍，并为跨平台和移动设备的商业化准备阅读智能辅导软件。

This STTR Phase I project will commercialize a reading intelligent tutor and take it from a university-based research environment to a commercially viable product. Phase I will concentrate on the research objectives of finalizing technical innovations and testing and hardening the software for commercial use. A unique feature of this intelligent tutor is its content authoring capability that provides teachers and support staffs the ability to create reading material to best meet the needs of their learners without having to know anything about programming, linguistics or speech recognition. Another innovation of this tutor is the ability to provide error correction while reading and promoting fluency. The initial impact of this project is the ability to improve literacy for children using an intelligent tutor that's commercially available on today's mobile devices and easy to use and author personalized content. The broader impact is to leverage and design the software for adult learners. Literacy itself is more important than ever in today's global, high-tech economy. The proposed research of this STTR project will address literacy at all ages using an environment that's personalized, accessible, mobile, and adapted for all users.This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I project will focus on the commercialization of a research based reading intelligent tutor. The two technical hurdles are user interface (UI) and providing fluent speech recognition. One of the major difficulties in developing content that relies on the computer to provide coaching is providing the needed pronunciation information for each word. A crucial success is the ability for the reading tutor to allow the teachers and others to create content for the system without having to know anything about programming, linguistics or speech recognition. Another crucial success is the ability to allow the teachers to specify custom word pronunciations for out of dictionary words using brackets and the normal 26 characters of the English alphabet. There are not any reading fluency programs in the commercial market that combine this technical process with a "teacher friendly" user interface. This innovation enables teachers to truly create and add relevant reading materials to the reading intelligent tutor for their learners. The goal of the research in this proposal is to address the technical hurdles and prepare the reading intelligent tutoring software for commercialization across multiple platforms and mobile devices.