Ying Xu, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Education
Harvard University

Elinor asks questions

Children develop their skills and interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through informal learning experiences, which, ideally, should be rich with conversation and social interaction (e.g., asking and answering questions). While STEM-oriented television programming has become an important learning resource for many children, its benefits could be amplified by fostering children’s dialogic engagement.

I have been partnering with PBS KIDS to carry out pioneering research that aims to integrate conversational agents into children’s television shows so that children can have contingent interaction with media characters, with the goal of supporting active engagement and learning. I have developed such “conversational videos” for a popular PBS KIDS animated science show, Elinor Wonders Why, and conducted studies involving children aged four to six years.

Highlights

  1. Our studies consistently found that the conversational videos elicited children’s active verbal engagement during video watching (paper in JEP; paper in CHI2022).

  2. These conversational videos improved children’s understanding of STEM concepts, enhanced children’s engagement, and stimulated more science discussion among parents and children compared to videos currently aired on PBS KIDS without conversational characters (paper in JEP; paper in JADP ).

  3. The conversational videos helped children form a positive relationship with the media characters, which translated into improved learning (paper in JADP; paper in IJCCI).

Upcoming Studies

  1. A between-subject experiment involving 160 children to test the conversational videos of Lyla in the Loop on computational thinking. The study includes both recall of episode-specific content and a transfer component in the post-test, as well as immediate and delayed post-tests.

  2. A home-based experiment where conversational videos will be made available to children for one month. This study focuses on the naturalistic setting, extended access, the impact on parent-child interactions, and the feasibility of large-scale distribution.

Publications

  • Xu, Y., Thomas, T., Li, Z., Chan, M., Lin, G., & Moore, K. (2024). Examining children’s perceptions of AI-enabled interactive media characters. In International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction [DOI]

  • Xu, Y., He, K., Levine, J., Ritchie, D., Pan, Z., Bustamante, A., & Warschauer, M. (2024). Artificial intelligence enhances children’s science learning from television shows. In Journal of Educational Psychology.[DOI]

  • Xu, Y., Vigil, V., Bustamante, & Warschauer, M. (2022). Contingent interaction with a television character promotes children’s science learning and engagement. In Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.[DOI]

  • Xu, Y., Vigil, V., Bustamante, & Warschauer, M. (2022). “Elinor’s talking to me!”: Integrating conversational AI into children’s science narrative programming. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. [DOI]

  • Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2020). Using conversational agents to foster young children’s science learning from screen media. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’20). [DOI]

  • Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2020). Wonder with Elinor: Designing a socially contingent video viewing experience. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. [DOI] (Research and Design Competition Honorable Mention)

  • Xu, Y., & Warschauer, M. (2020). “Elinor is talking to me on the screen!” Integrating conversational agents into children’s television programming. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts. April 25-30, 2020, Honolulu, HI. ACM. [DOI]

Funding Sources

National Science Foundation: Developing Conversational Videos to Support Children’s STEM Learning and Engagement (2021-2026)

National Science Foundation: Using Conversational Agents to Foster Preschool Children’s Science Learning and Engagement from Interactive Science Videos(2019-2022)

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