Hello Everyone.
It is an honor to present our project - MathKingdom:
Teaching Children Mathematical Language Through Speaking at Home via a Voice-Guided Game.
Mathematical ability is important to children's development,
affecting their performance in a wide range of subjects.
Children's mathematical abilities vary widely before they enter school,
and a key contributor to this variation is children's language skills,
especially mathematical language.
Mathematical language is used to define math concepts and express math ideas,
and contains a variety of words that are highly content specific to math.
Children acquire mathematical language from early childhood,
and the quantity and quality of mathematical conversations in the family lead to
individual differences in children's mathematical language competencies.
To further understand children's opportunities and challenges
in learning mathematical language at home,
we recruited and interviewed 11 families with at least one child aged 4 seven years.
We had four maim findings as follows:
1. Children typically engage in math activities through verbal input.
Children were exposed to mathematical language by listening or watching more often
2. Lack of opportunities to initiate mathematical conversations.
Parents lack guidance on the proper organization of mathematical activities.
3. Poor Mathematical Language.
This narrative was often piecemeal and unstructured at home.
4. Low engagement.
Parents reported that children were not as motivated to participate in math
activities because of the many distractions they faced at home.
Based on previous research and our findings,
we propose four main design goals.
1. Make children speak Math.
2. Promote parent-child dialogue in mathematical language.
3. Mastery learning of mathematical language.
4. Sustained Engagement.
We design MathKingdom
an embodied game guided by voice agents that teach children
aged 4-7 years mathematical language at home by speaking.
The game is set in a math world in which the child has an avatar made of geometric shapes.
The game includes four flows.
Flow1, wake up.
To wake up the avatar,
children should identify the basic shapes of the Avatar and answer three mathematical questions about it.
Flow2, avatar transformation.
To customize the appearance of the avatar,
children are required to use a single sentence in Mathematical Language.
Flow3, Avatar Decoration.
Children could obtain a decoration by describing the features
of the decoration with coherent mathematical language sentences.
Flow4, Storytelling,
parents and children could have free mathematical dialogues.
To iterate and refine our voice-based interface,
we conducted the Wizard of Oz test.
We recruited eight pairs of participants,
with each pair consisting of one child aged 4-7 and the child's parent.
We had three main findings,
1. Real-time feedback.
We noted the importance of speech agents,
giving timely feedback to children on their correct answers and
encouraging children to read try for unsatisfactory answers.
2. Additional visual clue.
We provided additional visual cues for the third level to support children
in organizing coherent sentences.
Specifically,
the main features of the decoration are displayed in disassembly,
and the key connectives are provided as well.
3. Suggestions for parents.
We added some suggestions in the interface for parents to support their discussions with children.
To evaluate how well Myth Kingdom meets our design objectives,
we conducted a user study to examine the following research questions.
Do children find MathKingdom engaging?
Can children successfully navigate the voice flow?
Do children improve their mathematical language skills with MathKingdom?
Can children improve their mathematical skills with MathKingdom?
How do children and parents have mathematical dialogues in MathKingdom.
We recruited 21 pairs of participants for this user study.
Each pair consisted of a parent and a child aged 4–7.
Three pairs of participants did not complete the study,
and leaving 18 valid data sets,
we labeled these 18 children as numbers C1 to C18.
This assessment consists of three sessions conducted over a period of six days.
The interval between each session was one day.
Session one consisted of a 25 -min math and math language assessment,
a 2-minute introduction to the game,
and a 15-minute game.
Session two consisted of a 15-minute game.
Session three consisted of a 15-minute game,
5-minute post-questionnaire filling, a 25-minute assessment,
and a 10-minute semi-structured interview.
The results indicated that MathKingdom was effective in engaging children.
We assessed engagement using the Giggle Gauge self-report instrument on a fourpoint scale.
17 out of 18 children answered 4 to the question “I enjoyed using MathKingdom”.
And children can successfully be guided through the voice flow.
We counted the usability matrix for the first three flows.
We did not count data for the 4th flow because it is participant-led free
storytelling that relies more on improvisation than on a fixed model.
The data show that after three experiences with the system without improvement,
it could understand children's language output more effectively.
MathKingdom was effective in improving children's
mathematical language ability and mathematical abilities.
We combined measures developed by Purpura with measures of language
proficiency to assess children's mathematical language skills,
and the REMA-SF scale was used to assess children's mathematical abilities.
The results showed statistically significant differences
between children's pre- and post-scores
in both mathematical and mathematical language abilities.
In addition.
MathKingdom promoted mathematical dialogue between parents and children.
And the mathematical dialogues between children and parents in each flow are different.
In the first flow,
a common conversational pattern was for parents to ask children to answer.
The discussion occurred more often in the second and third flows,
discussions about how to make the avatars more beautiful or interesting.
In free storytelling,
parents tended to ask their children questions that they have previously answered incorrectly.
This paper makes the following contributions.
1. a formative study of families with priestcool-ageged children revealed that families
should be provided with a rich variety of mathematical language and opportunities
for mathematical dialogue to increase children's engagement through their initiative in play.
2. Designed and developed MATHKINGDOM,
a voice-agent-based game for children aged 4-7 years that
allows children to learn and practice mathematical language through math conversations with
iterations through The Wizard of Oz.
3. A user study evaluated the effectiveness of MATHKINGDOM on children's mathematical language competencies
and early mathematical skills and explored how MATHKINGDOM
promotes parent-child interaction through quantitative and qualitative methods.
Thank you for your time and attention.
We welcome you to read our paper for more information.