Inside IES Research

Notes from NCER & NCSER

Film Detective: How an AI-powered Game Aims to Improve Outcomes for Students with ASD

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to revolutionize the way humans live, even in ways yet unseen, and education is no exception. IES funds research at the cutting edge of technology and education science, and, as Director Mark Schneider has recently pointed out, AI may eventually serve to help educators identify, assess, and support students with disabilities. In 2018, NCSER awarded funding to Dr. Maithilee Kunda of Vanderbilt University to do just that.

Dr. Kunda and her team are developing a new game called Film Detective to improve theory of mind (ToM) reasoning in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ToM reasoning is the ability to infer the mental state of others, allowing us to understand and predict behavior based on our perception of their beliefs, intentions, and desires. The game builds on a technology-based intervention known as Betty’s Brain. Developed with support from a NCER grant, Betty’s Brain is a computer-based instructional program for middle school science that allows students to teach a computer agent to understand certain concepts. By teaching the agent, students grew their own knowledge and understanding. Dr. Kunda and her team are building on this software by adapting the learning-by-teaching model to improve ToM reasoning in neurodiverse students. (For more on Dr. Kunda’s perspective on the importance of neurodiversity, see this blog.)

The Film Detective game takes students through an interactive storyline in which they must help a scientist from the year 3021 “decode” the way people in today’s world behave in a series of films. The stakes are high as students help a scientist unlock a time machine by retrieving codes hidden in films by an evil scientist—aptly named Von Klepto—who has stolen items from the Museum of Human History. By teaching the computer agent—the player’s robot sidekick (named T.O.M.)—how to identify modern behaviors, the student develops their own ToM reasoning. The Film Detective storyline is a product of the creative talents of several Vanderbilt creative writing students, and the game mechanics were designed with insights of college students with ASD themselves. With the help of post-doctoral student and project lead, Roxanne Rashedi, the project team has used participatory design and qualitative methods to better tailor the game to the community for which it is intended. By working closely with students with ASD and their families, the project team was able to refine the original Betty’s Brain structure with new reward structures and storylines that balance the challenge of the game with the frustration that students can feel playing the game.

Screen shot of the Film Detective’s theatre and time machine room
Film Detective’s Theatre and Time Machine Room (illustration by Kayla Stark)

Every part of the project draws on the diverse expertise of the team, and the inclusion of a variety of perspectives has been crucial to informing the project’s development. The team includes experts from Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering and the Vanderbilt Medical Center’s Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD), with Dr. Kunda and students in computer science and psychology providing insights in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. The joining of expertise in artificial intelligence, clinical psychology, and educational psychology has allowed the team to merge theoretical perspectives on ToM development with conceptions of knowledge representation and modeling in computational systems. This approach offers the team a unique framework for understanding the development of social reasoning skills in students with ASD. Beyond the theoretical, the team has also leveraged artificial intelligence to evaluate how students progress through the game, using advanced data mining techniques and eye-tracking-enabled user studies to better understand how students with ASD can develop greater ToM reasoning through learning-by-teaching.

Film Detective’s hallway to concessions
Film Detective’s Hallway to Concessions (illustration by Kayla Stark)

The work that has gone into Film Detective exemplifies the ways that novel research that combines technological advancement and diverse perspectives can lead to important innovations in the education sciences. While Film Detective is still under development (it is currently being user tested, and readers are encouraged to sign up to take part here), IES is eager to see what will come out of this exciting collaboration.

Dr. Maithilee Kunda is the director of the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and Visual Analogical Systems and a faculty investigator for the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University. This blog was written and edited by Bennett Lunn, Truman-Albright Fellow for the National Center for Education Research and the National Center for Special Education Research.

Building a Community around Digital Learning Platforms

Last month, we were excited to announce grants within the Digital Learning Platforms Network, which includes five platform teams and a network lead. The purpose of this network is to leverage existing, widely used digital learning platforms for rigorous education research. This network is part of IES’s investments in innovation within education research and development and is funded through the Research Networks Focused on Critical Problems of Policy and Practice grant program. That program is designed to focus resources and attention on critical education issues faced by our nation as well as create infrastructure and process to bring together researchers who are working on similar issues. A major focus of the network—and why we chose a network approach—is bringing together educators, researchers, and platform developers to figure out how to leverage the potential of platforms for research insights. IES hopes that a major contribution from this network will be building that community of stakeholders and creating resources that reflect best practices for doing this kind of work. 

With that goal in mind, Digital Promise Global, the network lead, will host an event on October 22 at 3pm Eastern Time with introductory remarks from IES Director Mark Schneider. At the event, each of the five platform teams will briefly share the purpose of their project, and you can learn more about the network’s planned activities. You will also learn where you can go to find out more about the work that the network will pursue and to receive updates on their progress.

To join the event, please RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/seernet-launch-webinar-tickets-186961746617 


For more information or questions about the Digital Learning Platforms Network, please contact Erin Higgins (Erin.Higgins@ed.gov), Program Officer at the National Center for Education Research.

Perspective Matters: How Diversity of Background, Expertise, and Cognition Can Lead to Good Science

IES funds cutting-edge researchers who often bring multiple disciplines together. Dr. Maithilee Kunda (Vanderbilt University) is one such researcher who stands at the juncture of multiple fields, using artificial intelligence (AI) to address questions related to cognition and autism spectrum disorder. Recently, Dr. Kunda received an award from the National Center for Special Education Research to develop an educational game that leverages AI to help students with autism spectrum disorder better infer and understand the beliefs, desires, and emotions of others. As a computer scientist and woman of color performing education research, Dr. Kunda exemplifies the value that diverse backgrounds, experiences, and disciplines bring to the field.

Bennett Lunn, a Truman-Albright Fellow at IES, asked Dr. Kunda about her work and background. Her responses are below.

As a woman of color, how have your background and experiences shaped your scholarship and career?

Photo of Dr. Maithilee Kunda

In college, I was a math major on the theory track, which meant that my math classes were really hard! I had been what one might call a “quick study” in high school, so it was a new experience for me to be floating around the bottom quartile of each class. The classes were mostly men, but it happened that there was a woman of color in our cohort—an international student from Colombia—and she was flat-out brilliant. She would ask the professor a question that no one else even understood, but the professor’s eyes would light up, and the two of them would start having some animated and incomprehensible discussion about whatever “mathy” thing it was. That student’s presence bestowed upon me a valuable gift: the ability to assume, without even thinking twice, that women of color quite naturally belong in math and science, even at the top of the heap! I don’t even remember her name, but I wish I could shake her hand. She was a role model for me and for every other student in those classes just by being who she was and doing what she did.

I have been extremely lucky to have seen diverse scientists and academics frequently throughout my career. My very first computer science teacher in high school was a woman. At a high school science camp, my engineering professor was a man who walked with two forearm crutches. Several of my college professors in math, chemistry, and robotics were women. My favorite teaching assistant in a robotics class was a Black man. In graduate school, I remember professors and senior students who were women, LGBTQ people, and people of color. Unfortunately, I know that the vast majority of students do not have access to such a wealth of diverse role models. It is heartening, though, that even a single role model—just by showing up—has so much power to positively shape the perceptions of everyone who sees them in their rightful place, be it in STEM, academia, or whatever context they inhabit.

What got you interested in a career in education science?

I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy growing up, and in high school, I was wrestling with why I liked these genres so much. I came up with a pet theory about fiction writing. All works of fiction are like extended thought experiments; the author sets up some initial conditions—characters, setting, etc.—and they run the experiment via writing about it. In general fiction, the experiments mostly involve variables at the people scale. In sci-fi and fantasy, on the other hand, authors are trying to run experiments at civilization or planetary scales, and that’s why they have to create whole new worlds to write about. I realized that was why I loved those genres so much: they allowed me to think about planetary-scale experiments! 

This “what if” mindset has continued to weave itself throughout my scholarship and career.

How did it ever become possible for humans to imagine things that don’t exist? Why do some people think differently from others, and how can we redesign the workings of our societies to make sure that everyone is supported, enriched, and empowered to contribute to their fullest potential? These kinds of questions fuel my scientific passions and have led me to pursue a variety of research directions on visual thinking, autism, AI, and education.

How does your research contribute to a better understanding of the importance of neurodiversity and inclusion in education?

Early in graduate school, and long before I heard the term neurodiversity, the first big paper I wrote was a re-analysis of several research studies on cognition in autism. This research taught me there can be significant individual variation in how people think. Even if 99 other people with similar demographic characteristics happen to solve a problem one particular way, that does not mean that the hundredth person from the same group is also going to solve the problem that way.

I realized much later that this research fits very well into the idea of neurodiversity, which essentially observes that atypical patterns of thinking should be viewed more as differences than as being inherently wrong or inadequate. Like any individual characteristics you have, the way you think brings with it a particular set of strengths and weaknesses, and different kinds of thinking come with different strengths and weaknesses.

Much of my team’s current research is a continuation of this theme. For example, in one project, we are developing new methods for assessing spatial skills that dig down into the processes people use to solve problems. This view of individual differences is probably one that teachers know intuitively from working one-on-one with students. One of the challenges for today’s education research is to continue to bring this kind of intuitive expertise into our research studies to describe individual differences more systematically across diverse learner populations.

In your area of research, what do you see as the greatest research needs or recommendations to address diversity and equity and improve the relevance of education research for diverse communities of students and families?

For the past 3 years, I have been leading an IES project to create a new educational game called Film Detective to help students with autism spectrum disorder improve their theory of mind (ability to take another’s perspective) and social reasoning skills. This was my first experience doing research on an interactive application of this kind. I was a newcomer to the idea of participatory design, which basically means that instead of just designing for some particular group of users, you bring their voices in as active contributors early in the design process. Our amazing postdoc Dr. Roxanne Rashedi put together a series of early studies using participatory methods, so we had the opportunity to hear directly from middle schoolers on the spectrum, their parents, and their teachers about what they needed and wanted to see in this kind of technology.

In one of these studies, we had students try out a similar education game and then give us feedback. One young man, about 11 or 12 years old, got frustrated in the middle of the session and had a bit of a meltdown. After he calmed down, we asked him about the game and what he would like to see taught in similar games. He told us that he would really like some help in learning how to handle his frustration better so that he could avoid having those kinds of meltdowns. Impressed by his self-awareness and courage in talking to us about his personal challenges, we ended up designing a whole new area in our game called the Relaxatron arcade. This is where students can play mini-games that help them learn about strategies for self-regulation, like deep breathing or meditation. This whole experience reinforced for me the mindset of participatory design: we are all on a team—researchers, students, parents, and teachers—working collaboratively to find new solutions for education.

We are also proud to work with Vanderbilt’s Frist Center for Autism and Innovation to make our research more inclusive and participatory. One of the many excellent programs run by this center is a software internship program for college students or recent graduates on the spectrum. This summer, we are pleased to be welcoming three Frist Center interns who will be helping us on our Film Detective project.

What has been the biggest challenge you have encountered and how did you overcome the challenge?

Throughout my career, I seem to have gravitated towards questions that not many other people are asking, using methods that not many other people are using. For example, I am a computer scientist who studies autism. My research investigates visual thinking, but not vision. I work in AI, but mostly in areas out of the mainstream.

I get a lot of personal and intellectual satisfaction out of my research, but I do face some steep challenges that I believe are common for researchers working in not-so-mainstream areas. For instance, it is sometimes harder to get our papers published in the big AI conferences because our work does not always follow standard patterns for how studies are designed and implemented. And I do experience my share of impostor syndrome (feeling unqualified for your job even when you are performing well) and FOMO (fear of missing out), especially when I come across some trendy paper that already has a thousand citations in 3 months and I think to myself, “Why am I not doing that? Should I be doing that?”

I try to remember to apply the very lessons that my research has produced, and I am fortunate to have friends and colleagues who help lift me out of self-doubt. I actively remind myself about the importance to our species of having diverse forms of thinking and how my own individual view of things is a culmination of my unique lifetime of educational and intellectual experiences. That particular perspective—my perspective—is irreplaceable, and, more than any one paper or grant or citation, it is the true value I bring to the world as a scientist.

How can the broader education research community better support the careers and scholarship of researchers from underrepresented groups?

I think research communities in general need to recognize that inclusion and diversity are everybody’s business, regardless of what someone’s specific research topic is. For example, we assume that every grant proposal and paper follow principles of rigorous and ethical research design, no matter the specific methodology. While some researchers in every discipline specialize in thinking about research design from a scholarly perspective, everyone has a baseline responsibility for knowing about it and for doing it.

Similarly, while we will always want and need researchers who specialize in research on inclusion and diversity, these topics should not be considered somehow peripheral to “real science." They are just as much core parts of a discipline as anything else is. As I constantly remind my students, science is a social enterprise! The pool of individual minds that make our discoveries for us is just as important as any piece of equipment or research method.

What advice would you give to emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that are pursuing a career in education research?

A few years ago, when I was a newly minted assistant professor, I went to a rather specialized AI symposium where I found myself to be one of only two women there—out of over 70 attendees! The other woman was a senior researcher whom I had long admired but never met, and I felt a bit star-struck at the idea of meeting her. During one of the coffee breaks, I saw her determinedly heading my way. I said to myself as she approached, “Be cool, Maithilee, be cool, don’t mention the women thing…”  I was gearing myself up to have a properly research-focused discussion, but when she arrived, the very first words out of her mouth were, “So, there’s only the two of us, huh!” We both burst out laughing, and over the next couple of days, we talked about our research as well as about the lack of diversity at the symposium and in the research area more broadly.

The lesson I learned from this wonderful role model was that taking your rightful place in the research community does not mean papering over who you are. Certain researchers are going to be rarities, at least for a while, because of aspects of who we are, but that is nothing to hide. The value we bring as scientists comes from our whole selves and we should not just accept that but embrace and celebrate it.

This blog is part of a series of interviews showcasing a diverse group of IES-funded education researchers that are making significant contributions to education research, policy, and practice. For the first blog in the series, please see Representation Matters: Exploring the Role of Gender and Race on Educational Outcomes.

Dr. Maithilee Kunda is the director of the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and Visual Analogical Systems and founding investigator for the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University. This interview was produced and edited by Bennett Lunn, Truman-Albright Fellow for the National Center for Education Research and the National Center for Special Education Research.

 

IES Supported Intervention “INSIGHTS Into Children’s Temperament” is Featured at the 2021 ED Games Expo

The ED Games Expo is an annual showcase of game-changing innovations in education technology developed through programs at ED and across the federal government. Since 2013, the Expo has been an in-person event at venues across Washington, D.C. Because of COVID-19, the 2021 Expo will be an entirely virtual experience from June 1 to 5.

This year, the Expo will showcase more than 160 learning games and technologies and feature 35 different virtual EdTech events of interest to a broad audience of viewers. See the Agenda for the lineup for the Ed Games Expo.

 

ED Games Expo: Featuring INSIGHTS into Children’s Temperament

INSIGHTS into Children’s Temperament, an IES-supported intervention, is being featured at the Expo this year. INSIGHTS supports children’s social-emotional development and academic learning by helping teachers and parents see how differences in children’s behavior might reflect temperament/personality. Children work with the INSIGHTS puppets and learn that other children and adults react differently to the same situation due to their temperaments. IES has supported two randomized controlled trials (RCTs, the “gold standard” for claims of impact) of INSIGHTS – one in New York City and the other (ongoing) in rural Nebraska. Evidence from the NYC RCT and a longitudinal follow up indicate that children who participate in the INSIGHTS program during early elementary school experience better academic and social behavioral outcomes immediately following participation in the program, and these positive impacts persist into middle school. 

 

During the 2020 ED Games Expo, Sandee McClowry and her team performed an INSIGHTS lesson at the Kennedy Center to hundreds of attendees, including children, students, and families. INSIGHTS will be featured in this year’s ED Games Expo in three ways.

  • Tuesday, June 1 at 8PM Eastern: There will be an “ED Games Expo Kick Off Show” hosted by the puppets from the INSIGHTS intervention and the characters from the Between the Lions children’s television program. All of the characters will share information about the ED Games Expo while having a lot of fun and hijinks on a road trip to Washington, DC.  The Show will be introduced by the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, and will also feature cameo appearances by IES, ED, and government team members.
  • Wednesday, June 2 from 9PM to 9:45PM Eastern: Sandee McClowry will be hosting a Master Class for Educators. The event will introduce all of the INSIGHTS friends, including Coretta the Cautious, Gregory the Grumpy, Fredrico the Friendly, and Hilary the Hard Worker. The video will provide practical guidance to educators on how to deliver the intervention in a classroom. The event will conclude with a rich and engaging discussion with expert practitioners about how INSIGHTS addresses the social and emotional learning of children, educators, and parents. Click Here to access the YouTube broadcast of the Master Class and set a reminder to watch on June 1.
  • Materials from INSIGHTS, including puppets that can be printed out and professional development resources for educators, will be available to try out during the Expo and in the month of June.

 

For URL links to watch the ED Games Expo Kick Off Show and Master Class for Educators, See the Agenda. For more information and on how to access the resources INSIGHTS intervention, see the website.


Written by Emily Doolittle (Emily.Doolittle@ed.gov), NCER Team Lead for Social Behavioral Research at IES

 

NASA to Kick Off Its Latest National Student Challenge at the 2021 ED Games Expo on June 1

The 8th Annual ED Games Expo will occur next week from June 1 to 5. The free event is all virtual, open to the public, and will showcase game-changing innovations in education technology developed through more than 40 programs at the Department of Education (ED) and across the federal government.

 

NASA National Student Challenge Event at the Ed Expo

One of many noteworthy Expo events will occur on Tuesday, June 1, from 6 to 8 PM Eastern when NASA’s Flight Opportunities program will introduce a new national student challenge. Educators can register to attend this LIVE event on June 1 here. The NASA TechRise Student Challenge will invite teams of sixth- to 12th-grade students to submit ideas for climate or remote sensing experiments to fly on a high-altitude balloon, and space exploration experiments to fly aboard a suborbital rocket.

 

 

NASA developed the NASA TechRise Student Challenge to enable students to have a deeper understanding of Earth’s atmosphere, space exploration, coding and electronics, and a broader understanding of the value of test data. The challenge will also provide students with the opportunity to engage with NASA and technology communities and expose them to careers in science, technology, and space exploration fields.

The challenge will begin accepting applications in August for student teams affiliated with U.S. public, private, and charter schools, including U.S. territories.  The winning teams each will receive $1,500 to build their payloads, as well as an assigned spot on a NASA-sponsored commercial suborbital flight. Balloon flights will offer more than four hours of flight time, while suborbital rockets will provide around three minutes of test time in microgravity conditions. The Flight Opportunities program, based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, a part of Space Technology Mission Directorate, is leading the NASA TechRise Student Challenge. The challenge is being administered by California-based Future Engineers, which developed its platform with awards in 2016 and 2017 from the ED/IES SBIR program. Future Engineers’ platform has also been employed to manage past educational and NASA challenges, including the Name the Mars Rover student challenge. 

During the June 1 event, NASA experts will provide information to educators on the official competition. Teachers are invited to join a NASA TechRise Educator Summer Workshop, which will dive into the basics of electronics, coding, and designing for flight. The first workshop will be on Wednesday, July 28, 2021 and repeated on Wednesday, August 11, 2021. For challenge details and to pre-register for the competition, please visit the contest website.

 

More ED Games Expo Events to Engage Students in Hands-On Projects and Challenges

In addition to the NASA event, five more virtual events featuring government programs that engage students in project-based learning will occur on Monday, June 1 between 12:30PM to 6PM Eastern. Topics include students building and flying satellites, programs for museums, local communities and military facilities to engage students in experiential and real-world learning, and a program to inspire students to be inventors and entrepreneurs. See the Expo Agenda here for lineup of events and the ED Games Expo Playlists Page for video trailers by participating developers. 

 

We look forward to "seeing you" at the virtual ED Games Expo starting on June 1!


Edward Metz (Edward.Metz@ed.gov) is the Program Manager for the Small Business Innovation Research program at the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.