Message Production and Selection Interfaces for Virtual Humans

Message Production and Selection Interfaces for Virtual Humans
  • A link to the video (1 min)
        • VERG members who are working on this (or have worked)
          • Stevie Carnell
        • Goals (2-3 min)
          • Investigate whether virtual human interviews can elicit changes in a communication skills learners’ message production
          • Explore the effects of virtual human selection interfaces on message production and at what level of communication skills expertise they should be used
        • Collaborators (2 min)
          • Dr. Anna Miles, a speech-language therapist and instructor at the University of Auckland
          • Instructors of courses focused on dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing
        • Our role as virtual agent researchers (5 min)
          • I worked with instructors of healthcare courses to integrate virtual patient interviews into their curricula.
          • I designed and developed the selection interfaces used by students.
        • Target Audience (1 min)
          • Communication skills learners, such as medical or healthcare students
        • Our approach (8-10 min)
          • To evaluate message production and selection interfaces in virtual human interviews, I worked with instructors of healthcare courses to integrate virtual patient interviews into their classrooms. Students interviewed multiple virtual patients, and their message production was compared over time. 
          • One aim of this project is to improve patient adherence by training doctors’ communication skills. A patient’s adherence can be affected by a doctor’s communication skills if a doctor does not communicate in a way that is comprehensible to the patient (i.e. minimizing complex language and the use of medical terminology). By targeting doctors’ message production, I hope to improve their comprehensibility and their ability to communicate with patients.
        • Description of User Testing/ Evaluation, if any (5 min)
          • As part of my research, I have enabled over 150 healthcare students to conduct virtual patient interviews in three different countries. 
        • Results (8-10 min)
          • Virtual human interviews seem to elicit changes in communication skills learners’ message production.
          • Selection interfaces do not seem to affect advanced communication skills learners’ message production.
          • Novice and advanced communication skills learners view selection interfaces as appropriate for novice learners.
        • Publications (5 min)

     

    • Conference Publications

     

            • Carnell, S., Halan, S., Crary, M., Madhavan, A., & Lok, B. (2015). Adapting virtual patient interviews for interviewing skills training of novice healthcare students. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 9238, 50–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21996-7_5
            • Carnell, S., Lok, B., James, M. T., & Su, J. K. (2019). Predicting Student Success in Communication Skills Learning Scenarios with Virtual Humans. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, 436–440. https://doi.org/10.1145/3303772.3303828

     

    • Doctoral Dissertations

     

          • Carnell, S. (2020). Using Virtual Human Scenarios to Study and Improve Communication Skills Learners’ Message Production (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA). Submitted.

     

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