Broadening Participation for Remote Communities: Situated Distance Telepresence Mentoring through Embodied Communications

随着工作场所的变化，人们需要在技术方面培养更强、更灵活的技能。学校是学生可以学习这些技能的地方，但在电子、3D设计和类似的制造技术方面，许多学生无法接触到以技术为导向的老师和导师。为了帮助解决这一差距，该项目将开发技术、流程和培训，以开发项目，让STEM大学的学生为农村学生提供技术方面的远程指导。由于制作活动的动手性质，这使得通过屏幕共享或视频会议进行远程指导变得困难，因此需要新技术。因此，该项目将开发技术，使导师能够通过远程远程呈现机器人和增强现实技术提供包括手势、眼睛注视和语音交互在内的指导。此外，还需要新的流程和培训，以帮助大学导师成为有效的教师；这将通过提供课堂教学法和技术学习教育的MentorCorps项目来实现。技术和培训计划将在三个农村学区的高中生中开发和验证，他们将参加职业和技术教育（CTE）课程。本课程将提供3D设计、制造、电子、计算机编程和基本制造方面的知识；高中学生将轮流使用这些技能为他们所在地区的小学编写科学学习工具包。除了推进远程技术教育科学之外，该项目还将产生一些更广泛的影响。在德克萨斯州和墨西哥边境的科洛尼亚地区选择的学区为那些在STEM领域代表性不足的学生提供服务，这项工作将改善他们的STEM教育和工作准备。与此同时，大学导师将获得服务学习的机会，培养对未来职业生涯有益的教育、人际交往和同理心技能。本项目研究如何通过移动远程呈现机器人和增强现实来支持动手远程指导，从而介导包括语音和手势在内的具身交流。这个项目的核心是远程辅导体验的真正意义。该项目以体现沟通的心理语言学为基础，通过手势、凝视和言语作为一个不可分割的整体来表达意义。计划了四个设计-实现-测试-部署-评估周期，以了解是否以及如何强大的多模态语言可以通过设计进行远距离调解，以支持解释和指导。除了实验室工作坊测试设计版本外，该项目还将在三所农村高中的CTE课堂上部署和评估每个周期的最终设计。大学的理工科学生将试用增强远程呈现机器人，在三所农村高中教授这些课程，这些课程将动手制造技能和知识与制造工程原理结合起来，为当地的小学制作学习工具包。这个项目的科学贡献有四个方面：1。它研究空间、凝视和手势的具体交流与技术解释的关系，使用诸如演示和插图的人工制品、图表和绘图等资源来支持远程指导，以进行动手技术学习。2. 它研究了如何通过移动远程呈现机器人来远程参与这种多模态交际组合，扩展到在增强现实中提供凝视和凝视意识和手势，融合了学生的项目空间和导师的手势空间。3. 它将科学技术研究与农村技术教育的现实教育使命相结合，为研究提供了语境。4.它在心理语言学、计算机科学/人机交互和教育领域做出了贡献。对心理语言学来说：技术的实现使得对具身语言行为的探索能够在一个可操纵的平台上进行，从而提供新的见解。对于计算机科学/HCI：该项目研究了通过远程平台实现强大的多模式通信策略的具体交互技术。对于教育：该项目研究了为实践学习提供远程指导的方法，这些学习通常需要物理上的共同存在，并将基于maker的学习推进到制造的工程实践中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As workplaces change, people will need to develop stronger and more flexible skills around technology. Schools are one place students might learn these skills, but in the case of electronics, 3D design, and similar Making technologies, many students lack access to technically-oriented teachers and mentors. To help address this gap, this project will develop technologies, processes, and training to develop programs where STEM university students provide distance mentorship for rural students around technology. New technologies are needed because of the hands-on nature of Making activities, which makes remote mentoring through screen sharing or videoconferencing difficult. Thus, the project will develop technology to enable mentors to provide instruction that includes gesture, eye-gaze, and speech interaction through distance telepresence robotics and augmented reality. New processes and training are needed as well, to help the university mentors be effective teachers; this will be done through a MentorCorps program that provides education on classroom pedagogy and technology learning. The technologies and training programs will be developed and validated with high school students in three rural school districts, who will participate in a career and technology education (CTE) course. The course will provide knowledge in 3D design, fabrication, electronics, computer programming, and basic manufacturing; the high school students will use these skills in turn to prepare science learning kits for elementary schools in their districts. In addition to advancing the science of remote technology education, the project will have a number of broader impacts. The chosen school districts in the Colonias region at the Texas-Mexico border serve students who are underrepresented in STEM, and the work will improve their STEM education and work preparedness. The university mentors, meanwhile, will gain service learning opportunities that develop educational, interpersonal, and empathy skills beneficial to future professional lives.This project studies how embodied communication involving speech and gestures may be mediated through mobile telepresence robots and augmented reality to support hands-on distance mentoring. At the heart of this project is what a situated distance mentoring experience really means. The project is informed by the psycholinguistics of embodied communication where meaning is expressed through gesture, gaze, and speech as an indivisible whole. Four design-implement-test-deploy-evaluate cycles are planned to learn whether and how powerful multimodal language may be mediated over distance through the designs to support explanation and mentoring. In addition to in-lab workshops to test design versions, the project will deploy and evaluate the finalized design of each cycle in CTE classes in three rural high schools. College science and technology students will pilot the augmented telepresence robots to teach these classes that combine hands-on Maker-based skills and knowledge with engineering principles of manufacturing in three rural high schools to produce learning kits for their local elementary school. The scientific contributions of the project are fourfold: 1. It studies the nexus of embodied communication of space, gaze, and gesture with technical explanation, using resources like artifacts for demonstration and illustration, diagrams and drawing to support distance mentoring for hands-on technology learning. 2. It studies how this multimodal communicative compound may be engaged distally through a mobile telepresence robot extended to provide gaze and gaze awareness and gestures in augmented reality that blends the project space of the student and the gestural space of the mentor. 3. It combines the science and technology research with the real-world educational mission of rural technology education, thus bringing context to the research. 4.It contributes across the fields of psycholinguistics, computer science/HCI, and education. To psycholinguistics: the technical implementation enables the exploration of the embodied language behavior on a platform that can be manipulated to provide new insight. To computer science/HCI: the project investigates embodied interaction techniques that enable powerful multimodal communication strategies via remote platforms. To education: the project investigates means to deliver remote mentoring for hands-on learning that typically requires physical co-presence, and advances Maker-based learning to the engineering practices of manufacturing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.