Adapting Human Tutorial Interventions for a Reading Tutor that Listens: Using Continuous Speech Recognition in Interactive Educational Multimedia

Abstract

Human tutors make use of a wide range of input and output modalities, such as speech, vision, gaze, and gesture. Computer tutors are typically limited to keyboard and mouse input. Project LISTEN's Reading Tutor listens to children read aloud, and helps them. Why should a computer tutor listen? A computer tutor that listens can give help and give praise naturally and unobtrusively. In this paper, we address the following questions: When and how should a computer tutor that listens help students? When and how should a computer tutor that listens praise students? We examine how the advantages and disadvantages of speech recognition helped shape the design and implementation of the Reading Tutor. Despite its limitations, speech recognition enables the Reading Tutor to provide patient, unobtrusive, and natural assistance for reading out loud.