February 12, 1996

Design-A-Plant Will Put Virtual Teacher in Classrooms

A bespectacled, bug-like alien wearing a purple t-shirt, baggy shorts and sneakers could one day be a teacher in your child's school. The alien, named Herman, will shuttle children from one fantastic planet to another via his starship Green Bean to teach children about plants.

Sound like science fiction? Researchers at North Carolina State University are now prepping Herman for his career in education. Dr. James C. Lester, assistant professor of computer science, and Patrick J. FitzGerald, assistant professor in the School of Design, have founded the IntelliMedia Program, a multidisciplinary initiative for intelligent multimedia learning and information technologies, of which Herman is a part.

The IntelliMedia Program recently received initial funding of $70,000 from the N.C. State Office of the Provost to support the efforts to create intelligent multimedia software packages that combine artificial intelligence and multimedia design.

Because children usually learn by reading textbooks, last fall Lester and FitzGerald decided to challenge the computer science and design students in their class on knowledge-based multimedia learning environments to find a better way. To meet the challenge, the students developed a prototype software called Design-A-Plant, an interactive learning environment targeted for children ages 9-14.

"One particular way of manipulating something is by designing it, and engineers know this really well," Lester said. "My hypothesis is that this isn't limited to engineering domains but a broad range of subjects. You can get people to design artifacts, and their level of understanding of all the principles underneath is tremendously heightened."

Design-A-Plant, which teaches botanical anatomy and physiology, provides a set of environmental conditions for a plant: amount of wind and rainfall, acidity of the soil, etc. The user then chooses from an array of roots, stems and leaves with different properties and graphically assembles a plant, which must meet internal structural constraints and external environmental requirements.

During the opening segment, Herman explains the fundamentals of how plants work. He then travels to the surface of the first of four planets with unique environments and describes the climate and terrain. The descriptions contain hints for the user, but by no means are the answers simply given away.

Botanical terminology appears on the screen during explanations, and a graphic at the top of the screen depicts the environmental elements. The child chooses first roots and then stems and then leaves, building the plant from the ground up just as it would grow. Herman gently points out a bad choice and then offers a tutorial in which he gives more hints. The program includes 30 animations on botanical anatomy and physiology and 160 audio clips.

Herman responds exuberantly when users make a good choice with phrases like "Go for it," "Cool," "Looking good," and "Head rush." When a choice is not appropriate, Herman leads the user through one of many tutorials, which cover topics such as respiration, photosynthesis, osmosis, nutrient and water transportation and transpiration.

After a child successfully creates a plant, Herman yells "Yippee! I'm so excited. You've done it. You've done it," turns a cartwheel and performs an activity such as bungee jumping off a cliff or skiing down a mountain. Then it's back into the Green Bean for a jaunt to a new planet with a different environment. The package contains four types of environments with four complexity levels each, for a total of 16 different problems.

The software's artificial intelligence adjusts to the user's level of knowledge by building a model of the child as he or she moves through the program, for example, by noting how long he or she takes to choose a leaf.

The program decides which environment to bring up next to meet that user's level of understanding and to challenge appropriately by considering how much time the child spends on part of the design. The program also decides what kind of advice to give and in what order to give it.

Seventh grader Helen Dombalis was one of several students from Martin Middle School in Raleigh to try out Design-A-Plant for the developers. She laughed when Herman indicated her choice was not a good one and nodded when she heard hints in the explanations. She said the program would help kids at school because "when the teacher explains something, she goes over it only once, and so you don't learn a lot.

"I like this because you're learning but you also have a lot of fun," Helen said.

Fitzgerald knew when the project began that the team would need to provide entertainment elements such as music and action to appeal to the target audience.

"A couple of our challenges were to design something kids could use and to make sure kids learn something and have fun while doing it," FitzGerald said. "These are not easy tasks we took on."

Linda Dallas, director of exhibits for Exploris, formerly the Children's Museum about the World, is enthusiastic about the software. Dallas is currently assessing available educational technologies and developing a technology plan for the museum, which will open in 1998.

"We've been very impressed with the outcome, and I really do feel we will be working with the N.C. State team in some capacity in the future," Dallas said.

Maria Earnshaw, exhibits developer for Exploris, attended a demonstration of Design-A-Plant and said the software succeeds on several levels crucial to the museum's needs for educational technology.

"First, I learned more in thirty minutes than I could from a textbook. Second, the program was amazingly funny and geared to kids. Third, the graphics were beautiful," Earnshaw said.

The project was conceived and completed over the course of several semesters by the researchers and 25 undergraduate and graduate students, but it will carry into the future with students continuing to work on further developing the program. Computer science and design students worked in teams to do interface design, 3-D modeling and animation, character design and animation, software architecture design and system programming.

The team is currently working with Dr. Sharolyn Converse, associate professor of psychology at N.C. State, to conduct an in-depth study with children to gauge the program's effectiveness as a teaching tool. Ravinder Bhogal, a master's candidate in interactive multimedia at the Royal College of Art/London College of Printing, has traveled here to work with the team for three months on these assessments.

Lester said the next steps for refining Design-A-Plant include adding interactive and real time explanations and an interactive system that requires users to justify their choices. Eventually, after polishing and then field testing it in schools, Lester and FitzGerald plan to market the program.

Design-A-Plant is one of the first steps that the researchers are taking to realize their vision of high-tech 21st-century education, the subject of a chapter they've written for a book due out in the fall and edited by Peter Martorella, professor of curriculum and instruction at N.C. State. Lester and FitzGerald are planning for a release of Design-A-Plant in the school system within a couple of years.

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