Learning Science by Authoring Digital Puppet Presentations Erin Shaw and Lewis Johnson University of Southern California, Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292
[email protected],
[email protected] Introduction The goal of this project is to improve science learning through the use of digital puppets in peer teaching and collaborative learning settings. Digital puppets are animated guides that augment on-line educational materials with commentary and summaries, pose probing questions, and answer questions. At the AIED 2003 Interactive Event we will demonstrate an authoring tool that children can use to author their own digital puppet presentations. The tool enables children to annotate Web pages with explanations, summaries, arguments for and against, questions, and quizzes. The digital puppet then uses these annotations in generating its commentary. This approach has not been seen elsewhere. Our hypotheses are that an elementary school curriculum that utilizes digital puppets will lead to deeper learning, enhanced motivation, and improved communication and metacognitive skills.
Figure 1. The Digital Puppet authoring tool interface (left) and the puppet-enhanced Web page (right).
1. Motivation Educational research has shown the importance of explanation and reflection skills in promoting deep learning in science. Learners who are able to articulate and explain scientific concepts, and generate and critique scientific arguments, generally have a deeper understanding and are able to apply their knowledge more effectively, e.g., in solving problems [3][5]. Unfortunately this complex array of skills is often inadequately developed in low-achieving students, and children with English language deficiencies may have
difficulty articulating scientific arguments. This project seeks to investigate ways in which learners can acquire explanation, argumentation, and reflection skills through the process of authoring, viewing, and critiquing multimedia presentations. When properly designed, multimedia presentations promote deeper learning than comparable textual presentations do, as measured on retention and transfer tests [7]. Researchers have also found that the process of creating multimedia presentations can help students to learn more effectively [10]. But to ensure that multimedia authoring leads to effective learning, we believe that it is important to provide adequate structure and scaffolding for the authoring process. Children may find digital puppet authoring to be a fun, engaging activity, but our goal is not to engage children in puppet authoring per se. Rather, we use puppet authoring as a hook to engage children in the process of constructing scientific presentations and arguments. By scaffolding student authors to focus on key concepts and arguments, it may be possible to help the student authors to learn better, as they create presentations that help viewers of those presentations to learn as well.
2. Project Details The emphasis of the project is on understanding a piece of text, in a Web page dealing with the topic of interest, in the context of preparing a puppet presentation about the topic. The authoring tool, which is shown in Figure 1, helps users identify rhetorical relationships within the text in order to create a coherent presentation. In other words, students author a presentation not a puppet animation. The task of animating the puppet to create an engaging presentation is left to the Digital Puppet engine. We use the structure of the presentation, the rhetorical relations selected by the user, and the authored text to infer the presentation intent. We then apply pedagogical and dramatic principles to dynamically generate an animation that is engaging; applying these principles successfully is ongoing work. Pre-authored utterances and stochastic behaviors are included to add variety and motivate interest in the same way a real presenter would. When the user activates the digital puppet, the authoring tool embeds the user’s text into the Web page and displays it within a browser frame alongside the puppet. Embedded interactive buttons allow the user to control the playback of the presentation.
Figure 3. Character cards with personality descriptions, 3D Maya models of Macy and Skip, a 2D rendering of Skip, and a procedurally-generated Flash frame network for animating Skip’s head.
Though rendered in a cartoon style, the puppet appears human, and thus must act realistically. As shown in figure 2, it begins as a three-dimensional character modeled in
MAYA, a professional character animation system. Animating the character results in twodimensional renderings that are output as FLASH frames and converted to scalable vector graphics format. A procedurally-generated network identifies the relationship between frames and allows us to create animation sequences with a simple editor. We use an action hierarchy similar to that of Improv [9]. The mapping from intent to gesture is currently done at a gross level. An expression animation system could be used for finer control [2]. The puppet is executed as an applet, allowing for portability and extensibility. Communication among Web page, control engine and puppet is executed using JavaScript, LiveScript and TCP/IP networking. 3. Event Description In the Interactive Event presentation, we will describe the key features of the system, including the authoring tool and intent-based animated system. The this presentation will be conducted in part by one of the human authors, and in part by the digital puppet. After the overview we will solicit volunteers to create a new presentation, annotating one of several Web pages on scientific topics that were selected prior to the presentation. In the course of this exercise we will show how the authoring tool aids in the formation of scientific arguments. Finally we will lead discussion involving the volunteers and the audience about how the system might be improved. What other potentially beneficial authoring features might be incorporated? How might digital puppets assist students in authoring presentations? How might we build intelligence into the puppet given the constraints of the authoring tool? Again, the puppet will help lead this discussion. Please come and join us.
References [1] André, E., Rist, T., and Müller, J. (1998). Integrating reactive and scripted behaviors in life-like presentation agents. In K.P. Sycara and M. Wooldridge (Eds.), Proc. of the Second Int’l Conf. on Autonomous Agents, pp. 261-268, ACM Press, New York. [2] Cassell, J., Vihjalmsson, H.H., & Bickmore, T. (2001). BEAT: the Behavior Expression Animation Toolkit. In Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2001, ACM Press/ACM SIGGRAPH, N.Y. E. Fiume, Ed., Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series, ACM 477-486. [3] Chi, M.T.H. (2000). Sefl-explaining expository texts: The dual process of generating inferences and repairing mental models. In Glaser, R. (Ed.). Advances in Instructional Psychology, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 161-238. [4] Hawkins, J. and Pea, R.D. (1987). Tools for bridging the culture of everyday and scientific thinking, Journal for Research in Science Teaching, 24, 291-307. [5] King, A. (1997). ASK to THINK-TELL WHY: A model of transactive peer tutoring for scaffolding higher level complex thinking. Educational Psychologist, 37, 221-236. [6] Lemke, J.L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning and values: Norwood, NJ: Ablex. [7] Mayer, R.E. (2001)., Multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. [8] Microsoft Agent: ActiveX Technology for Interactive Software Agents (1997). http://www.microsoft.com/ie/download/agent2.htm. [9] Perlin, K. and Goldberg, A. (1996) Improv: A system for scripting interactive actors in virtual worlds. In Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 96, pages 205--216, August 1996. [10] Shaffer, D.W. & Resnick, M. (1999). "Thick" Authenticity: New Media and Authentic Learning. Journal of Interactive Learning Research 10(2), 195-215.
