RAPID: DRL AI: A Community-Inclusive AI Chatbot to Support Teachers in Developing Culturally Focused and Universally Designed STEM Activities

大型语言模型（LLM）代表了K12 STEM学习的一种新的快速变化的技术进步。在设计法学硕士为基础的教育系统时，调查并提供包括正义、公平、包容、社区文化资本和财富在内的途径是至关重要的。在开发人工智能聊天机器人的背景下，这个RAPID项目将研究教师如何规划普遍设计的、与文化相关的、响应性强的K12 STEM学习活动和环境。这项研究将有助于改进法学硕士，将新的方法纳入社区数据，并将来自用户社区的知识强化到法学硕士中，这在法学硕士通常训练的大型文本语料库中是很大程度上缺失的。人工智能聊天机器人将提高教师的能力，以创建更具包容性的STEM活动，并通过促进将更多代表性不足的学习者纳入STEM职业来支持职业道路。这项建议是在回复致同事信（DCL）后收到的：快速加速正式和非正式环境中K-12教育中的人工智能研究（NSF 23-097），由学生和教师创新技术体验（ITEST）项目资助，该项目支持建立对实践、项目要素、背景和过程的理解，有助于提高学生对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）以及信息和通信技术（ICT）职业的知识和兴趣。该项目将召集一系列焦点小组，采用基于社区的参与式行动研究方法，为聊天机器人提供训练数据。这种方法认识到，通过将社区纳入设计，引导AI解决社区问题，以及采用跨学科和基于系统的立场，人工智能可以促进和促进社区福祉。人工智能训练将对文化差异非常敏感，情感分析等技术将有助于理解上下文并确保文化上适当的反应。以人为中心的人工智能方法将通过部署聊天机器人来持续整合用户反馈，并积极寻求不同参与者的回应。这一过程将强化来自用户社区的知识，而这些知识在人工智能通常训练的内容中基本上是缺失的，从而产生一个能够生成更具文化意识的文本的人工智能系统。重要的是，该项目将为开发社区来源的AI法学硕士创建一个模型，可以继续改进和研究。在项目年度结束前，一个测试版的聊天机器人将提供给教师，以改进他们的课程计划、活动结构和学习环境，以便进一步研究和开发。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。

Large language models (LLM) represent a new and rapidly changing technological advancement for K12 STEM learning. It is critical at this point in time to investigate and provide pathways for including justice, equity, inclusion, and community cultural capital and wealth in designing LLM-based educational systems. In the context of developing an AI chatbot, this RAPID project will research the ways in which teachers can plan universally designed and culturally relevant and responsive K12 STEM learning activities and environments. This research will contribute to an improved LLM that will incorporate novel methods to incorporate community data and reinforce knowledge from user communities into the LLM that is largely missing from large text corpora on which LLMs are usually trained. The AI chatbot will increase teacher capacity to create more inclusive STEM activities and support career pathways by facilitating the inclusion of more underrepresented learners in STEM careers. This proposal was received in response to the Dear Colleague Letter (DCL): Rapidly Accelerating Research on Artificial Intelligence in K-12 Education in Formal and Informal Settings (NSF 23-097) and funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.The project will convene a series of focus groups to elicit training data for the chatbot, adopting a community-based participatory action research approach. This approach recognizes that AI can foster and grow community well-being by including the community in the design, orienting the AI to address community issues, and adopting an interdisciplinary and systems-based stance. The AI training will be sensitive to cultural nuances and techniques like sentiment analysis will help to understand the context and ensure culturally appropriate responses. Human-centered AI methods will be used to continuously incorporate user feedback by deploying the chatbot and actively seek responses from the diverse set of participants. This process will reinforce knowledge from user communities that is largely missing from content on which AIs are typically trained, producing an AI system that will generate more culturally aware text. Importantly, the project will create a model for developing community sourced AI LLMs that can continue to be refined and researched. A beta-level chatbot will be made available for teachers to improve their lesson plans, activity structures, and learning environments by the end of the project year for further research and development.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.