I am an Assistant Professor in the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan. I research and design AI technologies that promote language and literacy development, STEM learning, and wellbeing for children and families. I completed my Ph.D. training in Language, Literacy, and Technology at the University of California Irvine.
My current research investigate the design and effectiveness of conversational AI technologies to serve as language partners and learning companions for children, and how AI affects children’s social interactions and developmental processes. In addition, I explore children’s understanding of AI and develop programs to foster their AI literacy.
I collaborate closely with children, families, and community organizations to create media that is informed by and reflective of their linguistic and cultural assets. I partner with major organizations such as PBS KIDS and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, and my research is funded by the National Science Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
My work has been published in leading academic journals across psychology, education, and human-computer interaction, including Child Development Perspectives, Child Development, Computers & Education, and the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. I have received numerous best paper nominations and awards, and I am honored to be acknowledged as an Early Career Interdisciplinary Scholar by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD).
I am recruiting PhD students at the University of Michigan, in both the Educational Studies / Learning Technologies program and the Combined Program in Education and Psychology. Prospective students are encouraged to take a look at this short letter to learn more about the application process and what types of students my lab is looking for.
What’s New
Child Development Perspectives Paper on Children’s “Social” Relationships with AI
I recently published a study in Child Development Perspectives on the topic of children and conversational technologies. The paper, “Talking with Machines: C...
Paper on Conversational Videos Accepted to Journal of Applied Developmental Pscyhology
We recently published a study in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology on our collaboration with PBS KIDS. The project involved creating “conversat...
Start as an Assistant Professor at UMich in Fall 2022
I am excited to share that I will be joining @UMichEducation as an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences & Technology in Fall 2022...
Two Papers Accepted to ACL 2022
We have two papers accepted to ACL 2022, both focusing on automatic question generation in educational settings:
CHI 2022 Paper on Human-AI Collaborative Agent for Supporting Interactive Storybook Reading
I’m excited to share that we have another paper accepted to CHI 2022 after R&R, “StoryBuddy: A Human-AI Collaborative Agent for Parent-Child Interactive ...
Completion of a large scale benchmark dataset of dialogic questions for reading comprehension
With funding from Schmidt Futures, I’m pleased to announce that my team has completed the development of a benchmark dataset of dialogic questions for childr...
CHI 2022 Paper on Conversational AI and Informal Science Learning from Videos
Our paper, “Elinor’s Talking to Me!”:Integrating Conversational AI into Children’s Narrative Science Programming, has been accepted to CHI 2022.
$3M NSF Grant to Develop Conversational Videos with PBS KIDS
I am thrilled that our team (UCI and PBS KIDS) was awarded a $3 million NSF AISL grant to continue our research on conversational videos! The project will it...
CLS 2021 Symposium on Social Interaction in Digital Learning
We held our symposium, “Promoting Social Interaction in Young Children’s Digital Learning,” in the Connected Learning Summit. This symposium reviews three re...
$40K Funding from Schmidt Futures to Develop a Benchmark Dataset
I am excited to have received $40,000 from the Schmidt Futures as the PI to develop a benchmark dataset of dialogic questioning. This dataset represents high...