General Information

I entered the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University as a PhD student in the Fall of 2006. The previous Spring I graduated from Lafayette College, a small liberal arts and engineering school in eastern Pennsylvania. At Lafayette, I primarily studied Computer Science and Mathematics. During my time on College Hill, I also competed for the Lafayette Men's Track and Field Team.

At NCSU, I served as a teaching assistant for a variety of classes, including Knowledge-Based Service Support Systems, Intro to Computing-Java, Programming Concepts-Java, and the graduate level Analysis of Algorithms course. I joined the IntelliMedia Group in the Spring of 2007, and am now working as a Research Assistant under the direction of James Lester.

During the Summer of 2007, I worked as a research intern for Mark Riedl at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Marina del Rey, CA. Together, we worked on developing a story authoring support tool called ReQUEST.

I am strongly interested in efforts to broaden participation in computing and mentor students. Along those lines, I have spent several years as a member of the Raleigh STARS Academic Alliance (Students & Technology in Academia, Research & Service). This will be my fifth semester involved in the program, and I urge any interested NCSU computer science students to consider joining.

I also occasionally teach a weekend course on Design and Programming for Video Games for the Duke TIP program, which is a lot of fun.

Education

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

B.S. Computer Science (2006)
Lafayette College, Easton, PA

Honors

Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award 2008
Best Paper Award - INTETAIN 2008
NCSU Graduate Dean's Fellowship

Research

My research focuses on devising artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction techniques for use in intelligent game-based learning environments. Much of my work focuses on narrative-centered learning environments, which combine the motivational characteristics of narratives and commercial games, as well as the adaptive pedagogical support of intelligent tutoring systems, to foster effective and engaging learning experiences.

Specifically, my current work explores two key issues in intelligent game-based learning. First, it investigates computational models for scaffolding student learning and engagement in narrative-centered learning environments. Second, it aims to develop an empirical account of student learning and engagement during narrative-centered learning experiences.

Conference Papers

Jennifer Robison, Jonathan Rowe, Scott McQuiggan, and James Lester. Predicting User Psychological Characteristics from Interactions with Empathetic Virtual Agents. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA-09), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 330-336, 2009. [pdf]

Jonathan Rowe, Scott McQuiggan, Jennifer Robison, and James Lester. Off-Task Behavior in Narrative Centered Learning Environments. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED-09), Brighton, UK, pp. 99-106, 2009. [pdf]

Jonathan Rowe, Eunyoung Ha, James Lester. Archetype-Driven Character Dialogue Generation for Interactive Narrative. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA-2008), Tokyo, Japan, pp. 45-58, 2008. [pdf]

Scott McQuiggan, Julius Goth, Eunyoung Ha, Jonathan Rowe, and James Lester. Student Note-Taking in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments: Individual Differences and Learning Outcomes. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Montreal, Canada, pp. 510-519, 2008. [pdf]

Scott McQuiggan, Jonathan Rowe, Sunyoung Lee, and James Lester. Story-Based Learning: The Impact of Narrative on Learning Experiences and Outcomes. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Montreal, Canada, pp. 530-539, 2008. [pdf]

Scott McQuiggan, Jonathan Rowe, and James Lester. The Effects of Empathetic Virtual Characters on Presence in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. In Proceedings of the 2008 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Florence, Italy, pp. 1511-1520, 2008. [pdf]

Mark O. Riedl, Jonathan P. Rowe, and David K. Elson. Toward Intelligent Support of Authoring Machinima Media Content: Story and Visualization. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN), Playa del Carmen, Cancun Mexico, 2008. [pdf] (Best Paper Award)

Symposium and Workshop Papers

Lucy Shores, Jennifer Robison, Jonathan Rowe, Kristin Hoffmann, 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, Arlington, Virginia, pp. 87-92, 2009. [pdf]

Jonathan Rowe, Bradford Mott, Scott McQuiggan, Jennifer Robison, Sunyoung Lee, and James Lester. Crystal Island: A Narrative-Centered Learning Environment for Eighth Grade Microbiology. In Proceedings of the AIED'09 Workshop on Intelligent Educational Games, Brighton, UK, pp. 11-20, 2009. [pdf]

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, pp. 103-110, 2009. [pdf]

Jonathan Rowe, Scott McQuiggan, and James Lester. Narrative Presence in Intelligent Learning Environments. In Working Notes of the 2007 AAAI Fall Symposium on Intelligent Narrative Technologies, Arlington, Virginia, 2007. [pdf]

Jonathan Rowe, Scott McQuiggan, Bradford Mott, and James Lester. Motivation in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. In Proceedings of the AIED'07 Workshop on Narrative Learning Environments, Marina del Rey, California, 2007. [pdf]

Projects

Crystal Island - Outbreak: An intelligent game-based learning environment for 8th grade science education. [Link]

Crystal Island - Uncharted Discovery: An intelligent game-based learning environment for 5th grade science education. [Link]

The Narrative Theatre: An intelligent creativity-enhancement environment for 6th grade writing education. [Link]