Curious Conversations

It is critical to provide opportunities for young children to engage in meaningful conversations to foster long-term interest and curiosity in their topic of interest. Although many elementary school students are interested in a diverse range of science topics, they spend limited time learning about their favorite subjects at school (Sparks, 2021). Although many platforms aim to solve this problem by providing informal learning experiences for children at home, they fail to promote engagement and curiosity among our learners.

Curious Conversations leverages voice-based agents in homes to engage learners in science-related discussions. Using our platform, children aged 8-12 years first dive into an icebreaker question that informs them what they could do in space based on their interests. Then, they read a story with their social partner, Trazo, through the Alexa device. Trazo poses questions to the child that would help them reflect. Towards the end of the story, they engage with sentimental analysis questions and a drawing activity. Our aim is to help them gain confidence, build creativity, and eventually become independent learners.

During our user-testing sessions, we measured children's engagement and curiosity with our prototype through the initiation and duration of their interaction, explanation of their answers, connection to prior experiences, and excitement levels while talking to Trazo. Preliminary evidence suggests that children do like interacting with a conversational agent and different age groups interact with the conversational agent differently.