With increasing integration of AI-powered agents into educational technologies available to families with young children, the landscape of how caregivers and children interact together or separately with these technologies is underexplored. Understanding the nature of these interactions could critically inform the design of educational technologies to facilitate children’s learning, research methods for use in future studies involving adult-child dyad technology use, and policy decisions regarding the use of educational technology with young children. In this study, we explored the natural interactions among parent, child, and a child-friendly virtual rabbit character named Floppy. Floppy is a virtual agent in a Smart Speaker app that models adult dialogic reading and conversational strategies for use with young children (ages 4-6 years). Over a span of four to six weeks, 18 parent-child dyads read The Rainbow Fish, a classic children’s book by Marcus Pfister, during 24 at-home, remote sessions with Floppy. Of the 189 conversations generated during this time, 125 were initiated by a prompt spoken by Floppy. Though there were some variations among the dyads, across all conversations, parent-driven interactions made up 63% of the conversations, followed by child-driven conversations at 15.3%, Floppy-driven at 14.3%, and Floppy-and-parent-driven at 7.4%. A select few parents were more comfortable having their children interact directly with Floppy, whereas the majority of the parents would direct children’s attention back to themselves or help children understand the questions by repeating or reformulating Floppy’s prompts. More than half of the parents reported that their children formed emotional connections with the virtual character. These findings point to a need to clearly define the role of virtual agents, even ones with limited AI, in this type of triadic interaction.

In this paper we explore the intersection of three domains: immersive virtual reality (VR), collaborative problem solving, and the development of spatial skills. We conducted a narrative review of literature between 2011 and 2021 looking for articles that included keywords associated with spatial skills, collaboration, and immersive virtual reality in 7 well known databases. Searches resulted in a thorough review of 21 articles. These articles included examples of virtual, physical, and applied spatial, collaborative tasks. Most of the tasks in the research were performance tasks that involved spatial skills of object location and spatial navigation by locating objects in a virtual world. Results of these studies also suggest specific design features that can benefit collaboration among users when engaging in spatial tasks. This study contributes to the literature by synthesizing research on collaboration and spatial skills in virtual reality and distilling suggestions for designers of VR experiences.

Role-plays of interpersonal interactions are essential to learning across professions, but effective simulations are difficult to create in typical learning management systems. To empower educators and researchers to advance simulation-based pedagogy, we have developed the Digital Clinical Simulation Suite (DCSS, pronounced "decks"), an open-source platform for rehearsing for improvisational interactions. Participants are immersed in vignettes of professional practice through video, images, and text, and they are called upon to improvisationally make difficult decisions through recorded audio and text. Tailored data displays support participant reflection, instructional facilitation, and educational research. DCSS is based on six design principles: 1) Community Adaptation, 2) Masked Technical Complexity, 3) Authenticity of Task, 4) Improvisational Voice, 5) Data Access through "5Rs", and 6) Extensible AI Coaching. These six principles mean that any educator should be able to create a scenario that learners should engage in authentic professional challenges using ordinary computing devices, and learners and educators should have access to data for reflection, facilitation, and development of AI tools for real-time feedback. In this paper, we describe the architecture of DCSS and illustrate its use and efficacy in cases from online courses, colleges of education, and K-12 schools.

This study explores how players engage in problem solving during a cross-platform collaborative learning game about cellular biology. We tested the game with 8 pairs of students: 2 pairs of middle school students, 2 pairs of high school students, and 4 pairs of students in a biotechnology workforce program. Players took on one of two roles: An Explorer in virtual reality head mounted display and a Navigator using a tablet. Players took on one of two roles: An Explorer in virtual reality head mounted display and a Navigator using a tablet. Videos of 40-minute game play sessions for 8 pairs of players were transcribed and examined for patterns of game play based on stages of collaborative problem solving (CPS) developed by Fiore et al (2017). Players' discussion during gameplay was analyzed and visualized through Epistemic Network Analysis. Results suggested that players engaged in two-way communication using biology terms throughout the game, and that communication styles were linked to roles. After initial orientation, players moved through multiple cycles of clue finding and discussion that followed similar patterns even in groups with different knowledge levels. These results suggest that collaborative problem solving can be initiated through roles in a serious game and documented through participants' conversation during a serious game. Future research will focus on whether the game can be used to learn, practice, and improve players' CPS skills.

Practice is essential for learning. However, for many interpersonal skills, there often are not enough opportunities and venues for novices to repeatedly practice. Role-playing simulations offer a promising framework to advance practice-based professional training for complex communication skills, in fields such as teaching. In this work, we introduce ELK (Eliciting Learner Knowledge), a role-playing simulation system that helps K-12 teachers develop effective questioning strategies to elicit learners' prior knowledge. We evaluate ELK with 75 pre-service teachers through a mixed-method study. We find that teachers demonstrate a modest increase in effective questioning strategies and develop sympathy towards students after using ELK for 3 rounds. We implement a supplementary activity in ELK in which users evaluate transcripts generated from past role-play sessions. We have tentative evidence that a combination of role-play and evaluating conversation moves may be more effective for learning. We contribute design implications of using role-play systems for communication strategy training.

The assessment of learning in large online courses such as Massive Online Open Courses, or MOOCs, requires tools that are valid, reliable, and can be automatically administered and scored. We have developed and assessed a tool called Knowledge Assembly for Learning and Assessment, or KNOWLA. The tool measures a student's knowledge in a particular subject by having her assemble a set of scrambled phrases into a logical order. Initial testing indicates that KNOWLA is reliable, and can be used to measure learning gains. KNOWLA also shows promise as a learning tool.