Support for U.S. Doctoral Students to Participate in the Annual Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) and co-located Educational Data Mining (EDM) Conferences

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The United States has historically been the global leader in the field of artificial intelligence in education (AIED), or ways to use computerized artificial intelligence to enhance teaching and learning in contexts ranging from children learning math in school, to soldiers learning highly technical jobs in the US military. The preeminent conference in this field is the AIED conference; at this conference the latest research is presented and practitioners learn the state of the art techniques that allow creation of these important educational technologies. A related conference that is equally significant is the Educational Data Mining (EDM) conference, which focuses on research on big data and analytics for education. This proposal would provide partial travel support for 10 Ph.D. students from the United States, selected through a competitive process, to attend the AIED conference and/or EDM conference, present their work, and receive additional mentoring outside of their dissertation committees as part of a doctoral consortium. The intellectual merit of the work rests on the studies the graduate students submit to be considered for participation in the early career track of the conference; this work is then enhanced by guidance from world-class mentors who meet with the students in a structured format to improve their research. The broader impact includes the career impact on the twenty selected students, especially since promising graduate students whose advisors may not have funding to send them to the conference can still be included, and their work can be showcased and improved. Possible long-term broader impacts include building the field of artificial intelligence in education and data analytics researchers and thus eventually, improving the quality of education.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.