Development of a Twitter graduate school virtual mentor for HBCU computer science students

Abstract

The problem being addressed in the study is the underrepresentation of African American tenured and tenure-track faculty in the STEM professoriate despite HBCUs producing the most STEM doctoral graduates. This study uses virtual mentoring as a tool to aid undergraduate STEM students in obtaining information on graduate school because mentoring is a crucial element in preparing African American students for tenured positions. The focus of study of the study is to compare which conversational agent interface, the Twitter Conversational Agent or Embodied Conversational Agent, the users find the most effective. The sample is composed of 37 African American HBCU male undergraduate students who are STEM majors and interested in graduate school. The participants must already use Twitter. The same number of students (37) used in Gosha's study will be used for this study in order to receive an accurate comparison between the TCA and ECA. The study has not been executed yet, but it is intended to be executed soon.