This defense will be a hybrid event, taking place both in-person in UTA 5.522 and on Zoom. The Zoom link for the defense will be shared one day before the event. The dissertation draft is available in UT Box
Title: Understanding Children’s Search as Learning with Voice Assistants in the Home Environment
Abstract: Children are growing up in a world where AI-based conversational voice search technology has been part of their daily lives. Voice assistants (VAs) have potential for facilitating children’s learning by providing easy access to rich online information and engaging children to learn through interactions with information by removing literacy requirements (e.g., typing and spelling). Existing research efforts on children and VAs have primarily used a single data collection method with one study session or one-off interviews over a short period. In addition, the impact of VA use on children’s search as learning (SAL) at home has yet to be investigated in previous studies. Addressing these gaps in the literature, this study aims to (1) examine children’s perceptions of VAs as learning tools; (2) identify the patterns of children’s query formulations and reformulations when seeking information from VAs; (3) explore the impact of VAs on children’s motivation, self-efficacy, and epistemic curiosity in learning new information; and (4) investigate how children’s search behavior with VAs for new information influences children’s learning processes and outcomes. A total of 26 families (children aged 6-10 and their parents) were recruited to participate in this multi-method research for two weeks. Data was collected through interviews, questionnaires, information search tasks, device log files, and diary entries. This study makes theoretical and methodological contributions to the field of information seeking and retrieval by investigating commercially available AI-based VAs as potentially important learning technology for children’s information behavior at home. This work also has practical implications for future VA design that fully considers children to ensure VAs are child-friendly and age-appropriate for children’s learning.
Dissertation Committee: Soo Young Rieh (Chair), Kenneth R. Fleischmann, Yan Zhang, and Dania Bilal (University of Tennessee)