Slide set used by Mike Christel in presenting paper at ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Ottawa, Canada, June 15, 2011

1. Physics Pathway: A Digital Library Filled with
Synthetic Interviews
Mike Christel, Scott Stevens, and Dean Zollman
christel@cs.cmu.edu
Entertainment Technology Center
Carnegie Mellon University
Presented at JCDL 2011, Ottawa, Canada
June 15, 2011

2. Talk Outline
• What are Synthetic Interviews?
• What is Physics Pathway?
• Field use of
Physics
Pathway
• Conclusions

3. Synthetic Interviews
Interface and indexing technology that allows an
individual to have a fluent conversation with a figure as
if that person were present in real time

4. Synthetic Interviews (SIs) for Physics Teaching
• Initially, one “Master Teacher” used, but recipients
wanted broader representation of opinions
• Four in corpus: Roberta Lang, Chuck Lang, Paul
Hewitt, Leroy Salary

5. Physics Pathway: Motivation
Teachers relatively new to physics teaching find 1-on-1
interactions with a mentor extremely valuable, but
mentors have limited time. SIs provide virtual mentoring.

6. Physics Pathway: SI and Video Library
• Left panel: Synthetic • Right panel: Digital video
Interview interface library interface (see
(focus of this work) www.idvl.org for more details)

7. Synthetic Interview Interface
• 450,365 question variants
mapping to 6,598 physics subject
or physics pedagogy topics,
covered by one to four master
teachers in 7,600 video answers
• SI interface components – a
quick walkthrough….
(try it yourself later at
http://physicspathway.org)

8. SI: Query Interface
Interface into library of
synthetic interviews
emphasizes “Precision at 1”
– Top-rated answer to query
is immediately played to
keep up a fluent dialog

9. SI: Related Question

10. SI: Change Teacher

11. SI: Shortcuts
Two menus provide “quick
starter” shortcuts identified
by KSU physics
pedagogical experts and
American Association of
Physics Teacher (AAPT)
workshops to topic areas
covered by the digital
library

12. SI: Query History

13. SI: Feedback

14. Synthetic Interview Interface
• 450,365 question variants
mapping to 6,598 physics subject
or physics pedagogy topics,
covered by one to four master
teachers in 7,600 video answers
• SI: video playback, related links,
choose a master teacher,
provide feedback,
show what is answered,
query area (link to ComPADRE),
related questions,
past query history,
quick questions choices

15. Fall 2010 Trial with Physics Teachers
• 19 high school physics teachers, 14-week trial period
• Feedback given on individual responses
• Survey computed once a week
• 588 visits to web site
• Excellent coverage of SI data set to teachers’ queries:
only two queries received a default “I don’t have an
answer to that” video response (both typos)

16. Lessons Learned - 1
Source of played videos during sessions: Quick
question shortcuts used less than expected

17. Lessons Learned - 2
• Response coverage overwhelmingly seen as appropriate
• Relevance good: 67% good or ideal, another 29%
appropriate but not personally useful

18. Lessons Learned - 3
Synthetic interviews validated or reinforced physics
teachers’ ideas on their course materials and delivery
Question % of Teacher-Weeks
Built lesson from ideas in Physics Pathway 4.9%
Completely changed lesson plan 2.9%
Small changes to lesson plan 12.7%
No changes, Physics Pathway reinforced plan 34.3%
Did not use ideas from Physics Pathway 38.2%

19. Access via The Physics Front (NSDL)
Physics Pathway is a
Partner site accessible
from The Physics
Front.org: “A free service
provided by the American
Association of Physics
Teachers in partnership
with the NSF/NSDL” –
www.thephysicsfront.org
(part of ComPADRE
Digital Library in NSDL)
Example search: momentum looking at “Partner Results”
http://www.thephysicsfront.org/search/fedsearch.cfm?area
=federate&FedQuery=momentum&AllSearch=1

20. Take-Home Message from Paper
• Synthetic interviews engage physics teachers in a
virtual dialog for continuing education that has been
well received in AAPT workshops and KSU-directed
field tests
• The site is available for use at both
http://physicspathway.org and via thephysicsfront.org

21. Credits
Many members of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Kansas
State University (KSU) contributed to this work, including:
KSU Physics Education Research Group: Dean Zollman, Brian
Adrian, Chris Nakamura, Sytil Murphy
CMU Entertainment Technology Center: Scott Stevens, Bryan
Maher, Andy Korzik, Xiaoxi Liu, Srinavin Nair
ComPADRE/NSDL Integration: Lyle Barbato, Bruce Mason
For more information: http://www.physicspathway.org/PathwayHome.html
Library of physics teaching resources accessible via thephysicsfront.org or
directly at physicspathway.org
This work supported by the National Science Foundation Teacher
Professional Continuum Program under Grants 0455772 & 0455813. A
preliminary version was supported by NSF's NSDL Program under grants
0226219 & 0226157.