2018-19 Presidential Fellows in Data Science -- Data Science Institute

This project aims to develop opportunities for teachers to practice dialogue techniques in realistic but safe, virtually simulated environments. Rather than forcing young teachers to first encounter these conflicts in real situations, Adewole and Bywater will build a simulator to enable teachers to practice having difficult conversations using immersive 3D virtual reality. The system will create realistic settings that involve conversations between the teacher and a diverse group of artificially intelligent virtual students. In this project, we will learn and evaluate adaptive emotion regulation (ER) strategies for socially anxious individuals by developing methods that combine network analysis with reinforcement learning in an off-policy setting. This interdisciplinary collaboration between psychology and engineering permits a deeper understanding of the dynamics of ER in real life.