Artificial Intelligence Curriculum and K-12 Teacher Agency: Barriers and Opportunities

2023 - 2024

AI-powered tools have the potential to transform education, both in formal and informal settings. The immense potential for AI to address challenges in education has created an urgent need to characterize how K-12 education may leverage these powerful tools safely, ethically, and equitably. While the AI in education landscape is changing drastically and rapidly, little is known about K-12 educators' engagement with AI and how newly developed tools and curriculum will be received and integrated into classrooms.

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Empowering Teachers to Collaborate with Generative AI for Developing High-Quality STEM Learning Resources

2023 - 2024

The rapid advances in large language models (LLMs) have presented tremendous opportunities to create interactive, personalized learning resources on a large scale. To fully harness the educational potential of these technologies, it is crucial that teachers - who are at the forefront of daily student interaction and possess indispensable knowledge and expertise - serve as key contributors in the process.

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Empowering Math Teachers with an AI Tool for Auto-Generation of Technology-Enhanced Assessments

2023 - 2024

The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) and powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) has evoked excitement and confusion among K-12 teachers regarding AI's impact on teaching, assessments, and student work. It is vital for researchers with expertise in human-centered teaching and learning to share empirically grounded proofs-of-concept of teacher-AI teaming to enhance teacher capacities for better learning outcomes for all students.

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Developing and Researching Youth-Driven Media that Highlights Science as an Act of Service During a Public Health Crisis

2020 - 2022

During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous media sources have placed a spotlight on the critical role of science and scientists in promoting public health. In contrast to many existing media sources that portray images of adult scientists, this project will develop media that portrays youth scientists as they conduct scientific research related to COVID-19. This media will be developed based on the findings from focus groups with youth of color, and it will include features that are designed to encourage youth to see the value of science while envisioning themselves as participants in science.

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Making the Transition to Remote Science Teaching and Learning

2020 - 2021

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.

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Virtual Epidemics for Promoting Upper Elementary and Middle School Students' Immersion and Inquiry into Pandemic Outbreaks

2020 - 2022

This RAPID was submitted in response to the NSF Dear Colleague letter related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Epidemiologists have long used simulations of epidemics to better understand their complex dynamics.  More recently, simulations have been used as a teaching tool for public health prevention and protection measures.  Research has shown that through virtual simulations students can better understand the underpinnings of disease spread and social interactions.  This project focuses on how virtual epidemics can engage teachers and students (10-14 years old) as participa

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