VMT: Supporting Virtual Math Teams With Language Technologies

Language Technologies for Education

This research attempts to understand how to structure interactions among peer learners in online education environments using language technologies. It seeks to enhance effective participation and learning in the Virtual Math Teams (VMT) online math service, housed in the Math Forum, a major NSF-funded initiative that specifically targets inner-city, low-income minority students. This enhanced participation will be accomplished by designing, developing, testing, refining and deploying automated interventions to support significantly less expensive but nevertheless highly effective group facilitation. The key research goal is to experimentally learn broadly applicable principles for supporting effective collaborative problem-solving by eliciting behavior that is productive for student learning in diverse groups.