The proposed work aims to scale up powerful, computer-based learning programs with cutting-edge speech and animation technology. These programs help children with special needs to acquire the foundational speech, language, and reading skills necessary for academic achievement, social interaction and self-esteem. The investigators target four populations of students with special needs, representing between 20-25% of all K-12 students in the country, students whose needs are currently not met adequately by the public school system: students with 1) hearing impairments, 2) autism spectrum disorders, 3) English as a second language, and 4) reading disabilities. The impact of the reduced potential of all these students is devastating both to them and to society. Computer-based programs can help these students overcome significant barriers to learning so they can realize their potential. The proposed project would provide students and their teachers with computer-based learning tool that enable significant learning gains whole reducing teacher load. The investigators propose to identify barriers to the widespread deployment and acceptance of these tools and to develop strategies that will enable them to successfully scale up programs using these tools to effect systemic change. The proposed work builds on a strong foundation of theoretical and empirical research by the investigators on learning in areas of speech and language, reading skills, and comprehension, and research and development of human language technologies. Their work has led to the development and successful deployment of computerized language training tutors that use intelligent animated agents to teach speech, reading, and classroom subjects to profoundly deaf children at Tucker Maxon Oral School in Portland, OR, and to students with dyslexia and ASD at schools in Boulder, CO. While educational technology is now poised to advance student achievement in many academic areas, the technology will be useless unless teachers feel invested, competent, and interested in including the technology in their own teaching. The goal of this research is to identify factors which hinder and help in the acceptance and deployment of the software, and to develop a model which will be useful for other researchers and developers in scaling up potentially valuable new technologies in education.
| Ma, Jiyong; Cole, Ron; Pellom, Bryan et al. (2006) Accurate visible speech synthesis based on concatenating variable length motion capture data. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph 12:266-76 |
