Enhancing Early Literacy-Building Apps with Improved Audio Understanding

All students have the potential to read at or above grade level, however only 31% of U.S. 4th grade students meet reading proficiency standards. The Boston University Wheelock Institute for the Science of Education (BU WISE) has enlisted SCOPE students to help teachers enhance their abilities to develop literacy among K-2 students. The Reach Every Reader research project that BU WISE members play a leadership role in is a part of a multi-university effort that seeks to focus 2026-2027 on improving the ways that AI-assisted assessments can inform classroom instruction. 

One exploration area that can benefit these efforts involves SCOPE students investigating ways that automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems can account for developmentally appropriate considerations while transcribing and assessing speech patterns of young learners. The team can contribute to the development of interactive games that make use of ASR systems. SCOPE students will carry out experiments that help ASR systems increase their accuracy in identifying units of sound early readers make in small group reading sessions in addition to less-noisy individual environments when they’re playing reading games on a tablet. The team will prototype visualizations that allow educators to make sense of a roster of students’ engagements from group and individual reading work in digestible and actionable ways.

Accounting for different linguistic capabilities, regional dialectical variations, environmental impact, and ethical considerations will be paramount to this work.

Faculty Advisor:

• Amon Millner

Team Members:

• Zac Adeboye
• Jade Campbell
• Sally Lee
• Khoi Nguyen
• Suraj Sajjala