HBCU-DCL EAGER: Virtually Preparing Underrepresented Students for the Engineering and Computer Science Professoriate Using Embodied Conversational Agents

HBCU-DCL EAGER：使用实体对话代理为工程和计算机科学教授职位的代表性不足的学生做好虚拟准备

• 批准号: 1742942
• 负责人: Kinnis Gosha
• 金额: $ 29.99万
• 依托单位: Morehouse College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-09-01 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1742942&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: HBCU; DCL; EAGER; Virtually; Preparing

Across the U. S. higher education landscape, African Americans and Hispanics are significantly underrepresented among the engineering and computer science faculty. Because of this trend, many African American and Hispanic students are frequently not afforded the opportunity to develop meaningful mentoring relationships with African Americans and Hispanics among their engineering and computer science faculty. The overall goal of this research project is to develop and evaluate a virtual mentoring system that uses a group of embodied conversational agents (i.e., think avatars) to mentor underrepresented doctoral students, majoring in engineering and computer science and who are pursuing a career as a college professor. The virtual mentoring system will be designed to expose underrepresented, undergraduate and graduate students in engineering and computer science to the many opportunities available in the professoriate by educating them about the professoriate in general and the engineering and computer professoriate specifically. It will offer concrete guidance on the different routes to the engineering and computer science professoriate. In the scientific and theoretical literature, research has shown the effectiveness of embodied conversational agents in providing career mentoring functions. The career-related functions typically include sponsorship, exposure, visibility, coaching, protection, and challenging assignments. With this in mind, the proposed project will utilize exploratory, sequential mixed methods to study the overall effectiveness of the virtual mentoring system. Project effectiveness will be measured by using three factors: content knowledge, attitude and preliminary indicators (i.e. applying to graduate programs or summer research opportunities, taking the GRE, etc.). As a part of the research project, the investigator will compare the virtual mentoring system with other traditional mentoring programs. The proposed project is potentially transformative, with immense potential to help diversify the engineering and computer science professoriate.

纵观美国高等教育领域，非裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人在工程和计算机科学学院的代表性明显不足。由于这种趋势，许多非裔美国人和西班牙裔学生经常没有机会与工程和计算机科学学院的非裔美国人和西班牙裔学生建立有意义的指导关系。本研究项目的总体目标是开发和评估一个虚拟指导系统，该系统使用一组具体化的对话代理（即，思想化身）来指导代表性不足的博士生，这些博士生主修工程和计算机科学，并且正在追求大学教授的职业。虚拟指导系统的目的是通过教育工程和计算机科学专业的本科生和研究生，使他们了解一般的教授和具体的工程和计算机教授，从而使代表性不足的学生接触到教授职位的许多机会。它将为成为工程和计算机科学教授的不同途径提供具体的指导。在科学和理论文献中，研究表明了具身会话代理在提供职业指导功能方面的有效性。与职业相关的功能通常包括赞助、曝光、可见性、指导、保护和挑战性任务。考虑到这一点，提议的项目将利用探索性的、顺序的混合方法来研究虚拟指导系统的整体有效性。项目有效性将通过三个因素来衡量：内容知识，态度和初步指标（即申请研究生课程或暑期研究机会，参加GRE等）。作为研究项目的一部分，研究者将虚拟师徒系统与其他传统的师徒系统进行比较。拟议中的项目具有潜在的变革性，具有帮助工程和计算机科学教授多样化的巨大潜力。