Developing Conversational Videos to Support Children's STEM Learning and Engagement

幼儿期是发展科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）基础知识、技能和兴趣的关键时期。出于这个原因，公共广播服务（PBS）非常重视开发儿童早期STEM内容，特别是通过其电视节目，这些节目在美国有60%以上的幼儿观看。研究表明，在看电视的过程中加入即时互动可以促进学习和参与。为此，加州大学欧文分校（University of California, Irvine）和PBS KIDS的研究人员制作了互动版的科学节目原型，孩子们在与人工智能对话代理驱动的主角交流时，可以在连接互联网的设备上观看。试点研究表明，当孩子们观看这些新的互动视频时，主角会定期停下来，就这一集的学习目标提出探索性的问题，并做出适当的回应，他们会更投入，也会学到更多的科学知识，这对在家说英语以外语言的孩子更有好处。基于这些早期的结果，在这个“发展中的创新”项目中，研究团队将开发、测试和制作两个PBS儿童电视节目的公开对话片段，一个关注科学，另一个关注计算思维。该项目将反复研究和开发六种对话视频，为儿童提供新颖的支持形式，包括建立在儿童反应基础上的扩展的来回对话，促进口头交流的视觉脚手架，以及双语语言处理，以便儿童用英语或西班牙语回答。会话视频将在实验室和家庭环境中进行评估。这项以实验室为基础的研究将涉及南加州一个主要是低收入拉丁裔社区的600名3-7岁儿童，研究人员将儿童在观看会话视频和其他三种格式时的学习和参与情况进行比较：(1)观看非交互式广播版本的视频；(2)观看带有伪互动的视频，即在固定的时间后，主角提问并给出一般性的回答，但听不懂孩子在说什么；或者(3)与人类共同观看视频的广播版本，并暂停视频并提出问题。这项以家庭为基础的研究将涉及80个家庭，他们被分配在一个月内在家观看非互动或互动视频，次数不限。在基于实验室和家庭的研究中，将使用前后测试来检查观看视频对科学和语言学习的影响，并使用日志数据来评估儿童在观看视频时的语言表达和参与度。在家庭研究之后，这六个视频将进一步完善，并通过PBS KIDS应用程序和网站免费向公众提供，每月有超过1300万用户访问。除了为全国各地的儿童提供吸引人的科学学习机会之外，这项研究还将对将对话代理纳入儿童stem视频内容的设计、可用性、可行性和有效性产生重要见解，并将这一创新扩展到其他教育媒体，如电子书、游戏、应用程序和玩具。该发展创新项目由推进非正式STEM学习（AISL）计划资助，该计划旨在(a)推进非正式环境中STEM学习的设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解；(b)提供多种途径，以扩大获得和参与STEM学习经验的机会；(c)推进非正式环境中STEM学习的创新研究和评估；(d)让所有年龄段的公众在非正式环境中学习STEM。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。

Early childhood is a critical time for developing foundational knowledge, skills, and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). For that reason, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) places a great priority on developing early childhood STEM content, especially through its television shows that are watched by over 60% of young children in the United States. Research suggests that adding in-the-moment interaction to television watching promotes learning and engagement. Toward this end, researchers from the University of California, Irvine and PBS KIDS have prototyped interactive versions of science shows that children view on internet-connected devices while they communicate with the main character powered by an AI conversational agent. Pilot studies show that when children watch these new interactive videos with the main character pausing periodically to ask probing questions about the learning goals of the episode and following up with appropriate responses, they are more engaged and learn more about science, with heightened benefits for children who speak languages other than English at home. Based on these early results, in this Innovations in Development project the research team will develop, test and produce publicly available conversational episodes for two PBS KIDS television shows, one focused on science and the other on computational thinking. The project will iteratively study and develop six conversational videos with novel forms of support for children, including extended back-and-forth conversation that builds upon a child's responses, visual scaffolding that facilitates verbal communication, and bilingual language processing so that children can answer in English or Spanish. The conversational videos will be evaluated in both lab-based and home settings. The lab-based study will involve 600 children ages 3-7 in a predominantly low-income Latino community in Southern California, in which researchers compare children’s learning and engagement when watching the conversational videos with three other formats: (1) watching the non-interactive broadcast version of the video; (2) watching the video with pseudo-interaction, in which the main character asks questions and gives a generic response after a fixed amount of time but can’t understand what the child says; or (3) watching the broadcast version of the video with a human co-viewer who pauses the video and asks questions. The home-based study will involve 80 families assigned to watch either the non-interactive or interactive videos as many times as they want over a month at home. In both the lab-based and home studies, pre- and post-tests will be used to examine the impact of video watching on science and language learning, and log data will be used to assess children’s verbalization and engagement while watching. Following the home study, the six videos will be further refined and made available for free to the public through the PBS KIDS apps and website, which are visited by more than 13 million users a month. Beyond providing engaging science learning opportunities to children throughout the country, this study will yield important insights into the design, usability, feasibility, and effectiveness of incorporating conversational agents into children’s STEM-oriented video content, with implications for extending this innovation to other educational media such as e-books, games, apps, and toys.This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.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.