Other Projects: JR Summit | NUMACK | Collaborative Storytelling | Virtual Peers and Autism | Literacy Skills for African American Children
Promoting Literacy Skills for African American Children
Literacy remains a critical unsolved issue in our educational system,
especially for children who do not share upper-middle class Mainstream
American English literacy practices. In our work, by examining the linguistic
practice of particular communities, we come to understand how individuals
participate in literacy activities and how language is used in the cultural
activities of a community. On the basis of this examination, we build
virtual peers who engage with children in emergent literacy practices.
Our research therefore allows us to combine the sociocultural norms
of language practices with innovative technology that provides effective
learning environments for diverse student populations. Click here for publications.Our current research goal is to design culturally authentic agents that bridge the gap between language skills practiced outside the classroom setting and those language skills required in the classroom for diverse student populations. As designers of effective learning environments, we propose that pedagogical agents should be designed to reflect authentic portrayals of ethnic groups. We argue that ethnicity includes more than physical appearance but encompasses verbal and nonverbal behaviors as well. To reach this goal, we observe verbal and nonverbal discourse behaviors of African American preschool children as they participate in the learning activity of storytelling and bridge building. We extend existing realization and cognitive architectures to feature an embodied conversational agent named Alex that models verbal and nonverbal behaviors of African American children who speak African American English (AAE).
Alex is a virtual peer who engages children in the fun activities of telling stories and bridgebuilding. While the physical appearance of Alex is designed to be race and gender ambiguous, the verbal and nonverbal discourse behaviors are based upon human models of African American children between the ages of 8 - 10 years old. It is our intent that African American children perceive Alex as sharing the same ethnicity and gender based upon the content and manner of Alex's speech. Alex is unique from other pedagogical agents in that Alex tells stories that include the linguistic patterns both of MAE and AAE. We suggest that as Alex demonstrates code-switching abilities between MAE and AAE, African American children who are fluent speakers of AAE will increase in their use of MAE language skills.