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

在美国各地。S.在高等教育领域，非裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人在工程和计算机科学教师中的代表性明显不足。由于这一趋势，许多非洲裔美国人和西班牙裔学生往往没有机会发展有意义的指导关系，与非洲裔美国人和西班牙裔之间的工程和计算机科学教师。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的会话代理（即，想想化身），以指导代表性不足的博士生，主修工程和计算机科学，谁是追求作为一个大学教授的职业生涯。虚拟指导系统的设计将使工程和计算机科学专业的代表性不足的本科生和研究生接触到教授职位中的许多机会，教育他们了解一般的教授职位以及具体的工程和计算机教授职位。它将为工程和计算机科学教授提供不同路线的具体指导。在科学和理论文献中，研究表明，体现对话代理人在提供职业指导功能的有效性。与职业相关的职能通常包括赞助、曝光、可见性、指导、保护和具有挑战性的任务。考虑到这一点，拟议的项目将利用探索性的、连续的混合方法来研究虚拟指导系统的总体有效性。项目有效性将通过使用三个因素来衡量：内容知识，态度和初步指标（即申请研究生课程或夏季研究机会，参加GRE等）。作为研究项目的一部分，研究人员将比较虚拟辅导系统与其他传统的辅导计划。拟议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。

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.