Collaborative Research: AI4GA - Developing Artificial Intelligence Competencies, Career Awareness, and Interest in Georgia Middle School Teachers and Students

合作研究：AI4GA - 培养佐治亚州中学教师和学生的人工智能能力、职业意识和兴趣

• 批准号: 2049029
• 负责人: David Touretzky
• 金额: $ 101.68万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-05-01 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2049029&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; AI4GA; Developing; Artificial; Collaborative; Research; AI4GA; Developing; Artificial

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies begin to reshape modern society, educating younger students about AI has become a national priority for both the United States and its competitors. In these early days of K-12 AI education, little is known about how diverse student populations relate to AI and which instructional strategies are most likely to engage them. Since most K-12 teachers are not yet familiar with AI, research is also needed on how to develop their AI fluency and confidence. This project, a collaboration between researchers in AI and education and the Georgia Department of Education, will investigate these questions by developing and testing a nine-week elective course for Georgia middle school students called Living and Working with Artificial Intelligence, and an accompanying online teacher professional development course. The student course will offer a mixture of activities including hands-on demonstrations, guided experimentation, online research, project-based learning, and exploration of AI-enabled careers. Teachers will also have the option of including computer programming activities. To ensure that the curriculum is adaptable to the needs of different populations and cultures, researchers will partner with school districts serving three ethnically and geographically diverse populations in Georgia: rural, suburban, and urban areas, and with large populations of white, Latinx, or Black students respectively. Both courses will be developed in collaboration with a team of middle school teachers from these districts who will first receive training from the investigators in the basics of AI and in culturally responsive teaching. Working with these teachers as they pilot the course will provide an understanding of the challenges in teaching/learning the content and the types of support needed for diverse teachers and learners to succeed. The project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.Over the three year project duration, 18 teachers drawn from 6 school districts will receive training in AI and culturally responsive instruction, and 1800 students will take the Living and Working with Artificial Intelligence course. The project will investigate four research questions: (1) What are middle school students' and teachers' knowledge of, interest in, comfort with, and attitudes towards AI technology and AI careers? (2) What types of technology-driven and innovative learning experiences are effective in increasing rural, Black, and Latinx/Hispanic middle school students' AI interest, knowledge, skills, self-efficacy, and interest in AI careers? (3) What AI knowledge and skills are developmentally appropriate for middle school students? and (4) What institutional or cultural barriers/accelerators prevent/promote course implementation? The research will use a mixed-methods design combining attitudinal surveys, in-class observations, subject interviews, student reflections, and examination of student artifacts. At the conclusion of the project, the professional development course will be made publicly available through the Georgia Department of Education web portal. Additional project deliverables include the middle school course materials, AI demonstration software developed to support the middle school course, the research findings, and measurements of the effectiveness of the curriculum for diverse learner populations when implemented by middle school teachers in their classrooms. The results will also be disseminated through conference presentations, scholarly publications, and social media.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

随着人工智能（AI）技术开始重塑现代社会，对年轻学生进行了教育，对AI的教育已成为美国及其竞争对手的国家优先事项。在K-12 AI教育的早期，几乎不知道学生人群与AI的多样化以及哪些教学策略最有可能吸引他们。由于大多数K-12老师尚不熟悉AI，因此还需要研究如何发展其AI流利性和信心。该项目是AI与教育研究人员与佐治亚州教育部之间的合作，将通过开发和测试为佐治亚中学学生开发和测试九周的选修课程，称为佐治亚州中学生，称为“生活和使用人工智能”，以及随附的在线教师专业发展课程。该学生课程将提供各种活动，包括动手演示，指导性实验，在线研究，基于项目的学习以及对AI支持的职业的探索。教师还可以选择包括计算机编程活动。为了确保课程适应不同人群和文化的需求，研究人员将与佐治亚州的三个种族和地理上不同人口的学区合作：农村，郊区和城市地区，分别与大量的白人，拉丁裔或黑人学生或黑人学生。这两种课程将与来自这些地区的中学教师团队合作开发，他们将首先接受调查人员的AI基础知识和文化响应式教学的培训。与这些老师进行试验时，课程将提供对教学/学习内容的挑战以及多元教师和学习者成功所需的支持类型的理解。该项目是由学生和教师（ITEST）计划的创新技术经验资助的，该计划支持对实践，计划要素，上下文，环境和过程的理解，从而有助于增加学生对科学，技术，工程和数学和数学（STEM）的知识和兴趣，以及在三年级的教师培训中，将接受培训，并将培训培训，并将接受培训，并接受培训，以下是培训，培训的培训和培训。 1800名学生将谋生并与人工智能课程一起工作。该项目将研究四个研究问题：（1）中学生和老师对AI技术和AI职业的知识，对，舒适和态度是什么？ （2）哪种类型的技术驱动和创新的学习经验可有效增加农村，黑人和拉丁裔/西班牙裔中学生的AI兴趣，知识，技能，自我效能和对AI职业的兴趣？ （3）哪些AI知识和技能在发展上适合中学生？ （4）哪些机构或文化障碍/加速器可以阻止/促进课程实施？该研究将使用混合方法设计，结合态度调查，课堂观察，主题访谈，学生的思考以及对学生文物的检查。该项目结束时，专业发展课程将通过佐治亚州教育部Web门户网站公开提供。其他项目的可交付成果包括中学课程材料，为支持中学课程的AI演示软件，研究结果以及在中学教师在课堂上实施的各种学习者人群的有效性的测量。该结果还将通过会议演讲，学术出版物和社交媒体传播。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响标准，被认为值得通过评估来获得支持。