SBIR Phase II: Bilingual Literacy Assessment and Skill Tracker

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力与美国学校系统中服务不足的新兴双语人口有关。尽管他们的规模不断增长（约占美国总人口的20%），新兴双语者仍然没有足够的支持，在学术环境中取得成功，往往是减法双语过程的受害者，这种过程有利于以牺牲母语为代价获得英语。缺乏足够的双语资源导致了特殊教育中出现的双语者不成比例的错位，以及双语人口中辍学率的增加，一般来说，特别是拉丁裔社区。为了解决这些问题，提出了一种由机器学习算法驱动的推荐系统，该系统将生成与全自动双语评估相关的个性化的有趣双语扫盲活动。该解决方案的独特之处在于基于评估结果和活动绩效自动生成个性化活动。这些活动的目标是发展评估确定的需要提高的技能，包括英语和儿童的母语。这个小企业创新研究第二阶段项目解决了不断增长的学龄新兴双语人口的教育需求（即学校系统中母语不是英语或只有英语的儿童），以及整个社会文化多样性和语言敏锐性的丧失。主要研究目标包括：a）设计可以引起幼儿注意的游戏式双语活动，B）为双语活动开发适合年龄和文化敏感的内容，c）改进语音识别器以与儿童的西班牙语和英语语音良好地工作，以及d）实施数据分析和机器-学习技术开发一个推荐系统，根据评估结果和活动表现，根据每个孩子的需求推荐个性化的活动。研发计划旨在开发一种创新产品，从现有解决方案中脱颖而出。关键的差异化特征是：1）它对双语儿童的关注及其在接受活动双语答案方面的适应性，2）由于整合了言语表现的自动测量，它能够帮助儿童发展说话技能，和3）该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，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。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is related to the underserved, emergent bilingual population in US school systems. In spite of their growing size (approximately 20 percent of the total US population), emergent bilinguals still do not have adequate support to succeed in academic settings and are often victims of a subtractive bilingualism process that favors the acquisition of English at the expense of the home language. The lack of adequate bilingual resources has led to a disproportionate misplacement of emergent bilinguals in special education as well as an increased drop-out rates in bilingual populations, in general, and Latino communities in particular. To address these problems, a recommendation system powered by machine-learning algorithms that will generate a personalized bundle of fun, bilingual literacy activities linked to a fully-automated bilingual assessment is proposed. The unique characteristic of this solution is that the personalized activities are generated automatically based on assessment results and activity performance. The goal of the activities is to develop the skills identified by the assessment as needing improvement, both in English and in the home language of the child.This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project addresses the educational needs of the growing, school-age, emergent bilingual population (i.e. children in the school system whose home language is not English or only English), as well as the loss of cultural diversity and linguistic acumen for society as a whole. The main research objectives involve: a) designing game-like bilingual activities that can get the young child’s attention, b) developing age-appropriate and culturally-sensitive content for the bilingual activities, c) refining the speech recognizer to work well with children's speech in both Spanish and English, and d) implementing the latest trends in data-analysis and machine-learning technologies to develop a recommendation system that proposes personalized activities tailored to each child’s needs based on assessment results and activity performance. The research and development plan aims at developing an innovative product that stands out from existing solutions. The key differentiator features are: 1) its focus on bilingual children and its adaptability in accepting bilingual answers for the activities, 2) its capacity to help children develop speaking skills due to the integration of automatic measures of speech performance, and 3) its recommendation engine that suggests personalized bilingual activities for each student tailored to their specific needs.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.