Exploring the Potential of Speech Recognition to Support Problem Solving and Reflection - Wizards Go to School in the Elementary Maths Classroom

The work described in this paper investigates the potential of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to support young children’s exploration and reflection as they are working with interactive learning environments. We describe a unique ecologically valid Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) study in a classroom equipped with computers, two of which were set up to allow human facilitators (wizards) to listen to students thinking-aloud while having access to their interaction with the environment. The wizards provided support using a script and following an iterative methodology that limited on purpose their communication capacity in order to simulate the actual system. Our results indicate that the feedback received from the wizards did serve its function i.e. it helped modify students’ behaviour in that they did think-aloud significantly more than in past interactions and rephrased their language to employ mathematical terminology. Additional results from student perception questionnaires show that overall students find the system suggestions helpful, not repetitive and understandable. Most also enjoy thinking aloud to the computer but, as expected, some find the feedback cognitively overloading, indicating that more work is needed on how to design the interaction tipping the balance towards facilitating post-task reflection.