MyST Children's Conversational Speech

MyST (My Science Tutor) Children's Conversational Speech was developed by Boulder Learning Inc. It is comprised of approximately 470 hours of English speech from 1371 students in grades 3-5 conversing with a virtual science tutor in eight areas of science instruction, along with transcripts and a pronunciation dictionary. Data was collected in two phases between 2008 and 2017. In both phases, spoken dialogs with the virtual tutor were aligned to classroom instruction using the Full Option Science System (FOSS) system, a research-based science curriculum for grades K-8. The eight FOSS science modules represented in this data set consisted of an average of 16 small-group classroom science investigations. Following the investigations, students conversed with the virtual science tutor for 15-20 minutes. The tutor asked open-ended questions about media presented on-screen, and students produced spoken answers.