SBIR Phase I: Artificial Intelligence Tutoring and Assessment for Teacher Development

本次小企业技术转移第一期研究项目致力于将前沿人工智能辅导技术的力量和收益带到教师专业发展的舞台上。对于新教师和/或在其专业领域以外从事教学的教师来说，在科学领域进行有效、高质量的专业发展的需求尤为迫切。传统的专业发展模式(例如，参加研讨会和研讨会)对一名真正苦苦挣扎的教师几乎没有影响。基于网络的材料虽然按需提供，但目前缺乏有效满足新教师对复杂科学科目的教学和内容的需要所需的深度和复杂性。拟议的创新是创建专业发展资源，使用先进的人工智能技术来模拟和教授优秀教师的经过验证的有效内容和教学策略，并为教师提供复杂的自我监控和评估手段。这将对新教师和在外地苦苦挣扎的教师产生特别有意义的影响。这项研究的结果将是一个基于人工智能的专业发展系统，以一种及时的方式在互联网上交付。利用经过验证的有效人工智能教育技术进行专业发展的能力代表了一种新的设计范式，这将对在化学以外的许多学科开发基于人工智能的复杂专业发展的新模式产生广泛影响。尽管这种影响对新教师和走出校门的教师来说是最直接的，但这种技术和方法仍有潜力造福于所有经验水平的教师。该方法的未来应用将解决美国竞争力倡议(ACI)和高素质教师不让一个孩子掉队的目标。

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I research project focuses on bringing the power and benefits of cutting-edge artificial intelligence tutoring technology to the arena of teacher professional development. The need for effective, high-quality professional development in science is particularly serious for teachers who are new and/or teaching outside their field of expertise. Conventional models of professional development (e.g. attending workshops and seminars) have little impact for a truly struggling teacher. Web-based materials, though available on demand, currently lack the depth and sophistication needed to effectively meet the needs of the new teacher for pedagogy and content in complex scientific subjects. The proposed innovation is the creation of professional development resources that use advanced AI technology to model and teach proven effective content and pedagogical strategies of an outstanding teacher, and provide the teacher with a sophisticated means of self-monitoring and assessment. This will have an especially meaningful impact for new teachers and teachers struggling out-of-field.The results of this research will be an artificial intelligence-based professional development system delivered in a just-in-time fashion over the Internet. The ability to leverage proven effective artificial intelligence educational technology for professional development represents a new design paradigm, which will have broad implications for developing new models of sophisticated, AI-based professional development in many subjects beyond chemistry. Though the impact will be most immediate for new teachers and teachers struggling out of field, the technology and approach hold potential to benefit teachers at all levels of experience. The prospective applications of the approach will address the goals of the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) and Highly Qualified Teachers in No Child Left Behind.