General Information

I have been a PhD student in the Computer Science Department of North Carolina State University since the Fall of 2008. Upon entering the program I joined the IntelliMedia group under the direction of Dr. James Lester. I also currently work as an intern in the Education Practice group of SAS Instute, furthering work on educational technology. I have also been an active member of the Raleigh STARS program which aims to broaden participation in computing since 2007.

Prior to starting my graduate career, I received my Bachelor's in Computer Science from NCSU in May 2008 with minors in Psychology and Cognitive Science. As an undergraduate student I was a member of the University Scholars Program as well as the Computer Science Honors Program. Through these activities I was also able to begin working on research as an undergraduate which helped to solidify my desire to continue onto graduate school. During this time I also spent three years as an intern at SAS Institute in the IT Management Solutions group.

Education

Ph.D. Computer Science (currently enrolled)
North Carolina State University

B.S. Computer Science (2008)
Minors in Cognitive Science and Psychology
North Carolina State University
Valedictorian

Honors

Acceptance to NCSU Preparing the Professoriate Program
Best Student Paper Award - ACII 2009 (story)
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award Nomination (story)
NSF Graduate Research Fellow (story)
NCSU Graduate Deans Fellowship
Valedictorian, NCSU May 2008 (story)
College of Engineering Senior Award for Scholarly Achievement for the 2007-2008 Academic School Year (story)
Member of Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society

Research

My research interests include Artificial Intelligence and its application in education. Specifically, I am interested in issues concerning empathy, affect expression and detection, self-efficacy and meta-cognitive strategies.

Book Chapters

James Lester, Scott McQuiggan, and Jennifer Sabourin (in press). Affect Recognition and Expression in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. In Calvo, R. and D'Mello, S (Eds.) New Perspectives on Affect and Learning Technologies. New York: Springer.

James Lester, Bradford Mott, Jennifer Sabourin, Jonathan Rowe, and Lucy Shores (in press). Supporting Self-Regulated Learning in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. In Azevedo, R. and Aleven, V. (Eds.) International Handbook of Metacognition and Learning Technologies. Berlin: Springer.

Journal Articles

Scott McQuiggan, Jennifer Robison, and James Lester (2010). Affective Transitions in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (1), 40-53. [pdf]

Conference Papers

Jennifer Sabourin, Bradford Mott, and James Lester. Modeling Learner Affect with Theoreticallly Grounded Dynamic Bayesian Networks To appear in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII-2011), Memphis, Tennessee. 2011 [pdf]

Jennifer Sabourin, Jonathan Rowe, Bradford Mott, and James Lester. When Off-Task in On-Task: The Affective Role of Off-Task Behavior in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. To appear in Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED-2011), Auckland, New Zealand. 2011. [pdf]

Jennifer Robison, Scott McQuiggan and James Lester. Developing Empirically Based Student Personality Profiles for Affective Feedback Models.In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS-2010), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 2010.[pdf]

Jennifer Robison, Scott McQuiggan and James Lester. Evaluating the Consequences of Affective Feedback in Intelligent Tutoring Systems. In Proceedings of International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII-2009), Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 2009. pp 37-42. [pdf] (Best Student Paper Award)

Jennifer Robison, Jonathan Rowe, Scott McQuiggan and James Lester. Predicting User Psychological Characteristics from Interactions with Empathetic Virtual Agents. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA-2009), Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 2009. pp 330-336. [pdf]

Jennifer Robison, Scott McQuiggan and James Lester. Modeling Task-Based vs. Affect-Based Feedback Behavior in Pedagogical Agents: An Inductive Approach.In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education (AIED-2009), Brighton, England. 2009. pp 25-32. [pdf]

Jonathan Rowe, Scott McQuiggan, Jennifer Robison, and James Lester. Off-Task Behavior in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments.In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education (AIED-2009), Brighton, England. 2009. pp 99-106. [pdf]

Scott McQuiggan, Jennifer Robison, and James Lester. Affective Transitions in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS-2008), Montreal, Canada, 2008. pp 490-499. [pdf]

Scott McQuiggan, Jennifer Robison, Robert Phillips, and James Lester. Modeling Parallel and Reactive Empathy in Virtual Agents: An Inductive Approach. In Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS-2008), Estoril, Portugal, 2008. [pdf]

Symposium and Workshop Papers

Jennifer Robison. Affective Support in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments In Proceedings of the ACII 2009 Doctoral Consortium in conjuction with the 3rd International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. [pdf]

Lucy Shores, Jennifer Robison, Jonathan Rowe, Kristin Hoffman, James Lester. Narrative-Centered Learning Environments: A Self-Regulated Learning Perspective. In Working Notes of the 2009 AAAI Fall Symposium on Cognitive and Metacognitive Educational Systems, Washington, DC. 2009.

Jonathan Rowe, Scott McQuiggan, Jennifer Robison, Derrick Marcey, and James Lester. StoryEval: An Empirical Evaluation Framework for Narrative Generation. In Working Notes of the 2009 AAAI Spring Symposium on Intelligent Narrative Technologies II, Stanford University. 2009. [pdf]

Jennifer Robison, Scott McQuiggan, and James Lester. Differential Affective Experiences in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. In Proceedings of the ITS'08 Workshop on Emotional and Cognitive Issues in ITS, Montreal, Canada, 2008. [pdf]

Scott McQuiggan, Kristin Hoffmann, John Nietfeld, Jennifer Robison, and James Lester. Examining Self-Regulated Learning in a Narrative-Centered Learning Environment: An Inductive Approach to Modeling Metacognitive Monitoring. In Proceedings of the ITS'08 Workshop on Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning in Educational Technologies, Montreal, Canada, 2008.

Other Publications

Jennifer Robison and Lucy Shores. Supporting Collaborative Learning in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments In Proceedings of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing . Atlanta, Georgia, 2010. [pdf]

James Lester, Scott McQuiggan, John Nietfeld, Jennifer Robison, Hiller Spires. Supporting Self-Regulation Through Affective Modeling in Intelligent Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. The 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA-2009) San Diego, CA, 2009.

Projects

SPARCS (Students in Programming, Robotics and Computer Science). I am currently the coordinator for the SPARCS middle school outreach program for broadening participation in Computer Science. SPARCS is sponsored by the Raleigh branch of the NSF STARS program. We offer monthly Saturday sessions to introduce students to fun and interesting concepts in Computer Science. SPARCS will begin its third year in Fall 2009.