Across the nation, teachers have shifted to delivering instruction remotely due to COVID-19. This transition to remote instruction has presented challenges for secondary science teachers who previously engaged their students in hands-on learning through empirical tests and observations of real-world phenomena, but whose students might not now have the equipment or materials in their homes to enable hands-on investigations.

Augmented reality (AR) allows the real world to be enhanced, or augmented, by computer-generated objects that are “added” to the real world. For example, a clothing store may use AR to allow a customer to “see” how clothes would look on them before they are purchased. This project at University of California San Diego will use AR to create an environment in which students can practice pair programming in an AR environment. Pair programming is a software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation, on the same piece of code.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology applied to images and video is transforming society with broad applications to many social and economic sectors. To develop a citizenry that will participate in this technological revolution, it is essential to develop learning experiences for K-12 learners on the foundations of AI literacy in order to adequately prepare the workforce of the future. Supporting the teaching of AI concepts in the K-12 curriculum requires integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines.

This Learning and Research Center will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by providing technical support to all ITEST projects, facilitating national dissemination of ITEST project outcomes, and further developing the ITEST research and development community.