AI Institute for Engaged Learning

人工智能领域的新突破为加速创新创造了重要而及时的机遇，这些创新与STEM教育领域紧迫的国家挑战有关。人工智能的进步使互动性、参与度和包容性达到了新的水平。在人工智能支持和扩展教师和学习者智能的愿景的推动下，NSF人工智能参与学习研究所将设计、开发和调查人工智能驱动的叙事学习环境，创造引人入胜的基于故事的协作解决问题的体验。该研究所将在自然语言处理、计算机视觉、机器学习以及人工智能伦理方面进行基础人工智能研究。在这些基础进展的基础上，该研究所将在具有丰富的人工智能驱动的虚拟代理和强大的多模态传感能力的叙事学习环境中开展使用启发型人工智能研究，以了解学生如何在丰富的基于故事的问题场景中学习和协作。该研究所将提供一个强大的基础设施，以支持人工智能驱动的叙事学习环境的大规模实施。它将为校内和校外STEM教育的独特创新创造纽带。其研究愿景将是通过创建生成式、协作式人工智能驱动的叙事学习环境，使学习者在学校、博物馆和他们自己的社区中深入参与，从而使不同的学习者成为下一代STEM劳动力。这一愿景将通过与不同利益相关者的联系来实现，以确保学院的学习环境是合乎道德的，并促进多样性、公平性和包容性。美国国家科学基金会人工智能参与学习研究所将汇集来自四所大学（北卡罗莱纳州立大学、印第安纳大学、北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校、范德比尔特大学）和一个教育非营利组织（Digital Promise）的不同研究人员组成的团队，在STEM教学和学习方面取得变革性的进步，该组织将把教育从业者、政策制定者和产品开发人员纳入工作中。该研究所的合作伙伴包括一个由K-12学校、博物馆和非营利组织组成的全国性网络。该学院将创造叙事学习环境，根据学生个人和小组的需求和兴趣，在多种环境（教室、课后项目和博物馆）中动态地生成互动故事。该研究所的研究有三个互补的重点，以创造：(1)叙述性学习环境，产生引人入胜的交互式基于故事的问题场景，引发丰富的交流，需要协调，并激发协作创造力；(2)具有多种交流方式（语音、面部表情、手势、凝视和姿势）的会话代理技术，以支持引人入胜的学习交互。自然语言理解、自然语言生成和计算机视觉的进步将推动具体化会话代理的发展；(3)一个创新的多模态学习分析框架，该框架分析了学生在与彼此、与教师以及与具体会话代理互动时，从学生的对话、凝视、面部表情、手势和姿势中获得的多模态数据的并行流。在整个研究所的活动中，将高度关注道德问题，重点是创建基于公平、问责制、透明度、信任和隐私等因素的人工智能增强学习。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Emerging breakthroughs in AI create significant and timely opportunities for accelerating innovation relevant to pressing national challenges in STEM education. Advances in AI are enabling new levels of interactivity, engagement, and inclusion. Driven by a vision in which AI supports and extends the intelligence of teachers and learners, the NSF AI Institute for Engaged Learning will design, develop, and investigate AI-driven narrative learning environments that create engaging story-based, collaborative problem-solving experiences. The Institute will conduct foundational AI research in natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning, as well as in AI ethics. Building on these foundational advances, the Institute will conduct use-inspired AI research on narrative learning environments with rich AI-driven virtual agents and powerful multimodal sensing capabilities to understand how students learn and collaborate in rich story-based problem scenarios. The Institute will provide a robust infrastructure to support at-scale implementations of AI-driven narrative learning environments. It will create a nexus for distinctive innovations in in-school and out-of-school STEM education. Its research vision will be to empower diverse learners to become the next-generation STEM workforce by creating generative, collaborative AI-driven narrative learning environments that deeply engage learners in schools, at museums, and within their own communities. This vision will be informed by connections with diverse stakeholders to ensure that the Institute’s learning environments are ethically designed and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. The NSF AI Institute for Engaged Learning will produce transformative advances in STEM teaching and learning by bringing together a team of diverse researchers from four universities (North Carolina State University; Indiana University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Vanderbilt University), as well as an educational non-profit organization (Digital Promise) which will bring educational practitioners, policy makers, and product developers into the work. The Institute’s partners include a national network of K-12 schools, museums, and non-profit organizations. The Institute will create narrative learning environments that generate interactive stories dynamically tailored to the needs and interests of individual students and small groups and in multiple settings (classrooms, after-school programs, and museums). The Institute’s research has three complementary thrusts, to create: (1) narrative learning environments that generate engaging interactive story-based problem scenarios that elicit rich communication, require coordination, and spark collaborative creativity; (2) embodied conversational agent technologies with multiple modalities for communication (speech, facial expression, gesture, gaze, and posture) to support engaging learning interactions. Embodied conversational agents will be driven by advances in natural language understanding, natural language generation, and computer vision; and, (3) an innovative multimodal learning analytics framework that analyzes parallel streams of multimodal data derived from students’ conversations, gaze, facial expressions, gesture, and posture as they interact with each other, with teachers, and with embodied conversational agents. Woven throughout the Institute’s activities will be a strong focus on ethics, with an emphasis on creating AI-augmented learning that is deeply informed by considerations of fairness, accountability, transparency, trust, and privacy.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.