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学习的一个新的和快速变化的技术进步。在这个时候，调查和提供途径，包括正义，公平，包容和社区文化资本和财富，在设计基于法学硕士的教育体系是至关重要的。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通用设计的、文化相关的和响应式的K12 STEM学习活动和环境。这项研究将有助于改进LLM，该LLM将采用新的方法将社区数据和用户社区的知识整合到LLM中，而LLM通常在大型文本语料库中进行训练。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。本提案是对亲爱的同事信（DCL）的回应：在正式和非正式环境中快速加速人工智能在K-12教育中的研究（NSF 23-097），并由学生和教师创新技术经验（ITEST）计划资助，该计划支持建立对实践，计划要素，背景和过程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，以获取聊天机器人的培训数据，采取以社区为基础的参与性行动研究方法。这种方法认识到，人工智能可以通过将社区纳入设计，将人工智能定位为解决社区问题，并采取跨学科和基于系统的立场来促进和发展社区福祉。人工智能培训将对文化细微差别敏感，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。以人为本的人工智能方法将通过部署聊天机器人来不断整合用户反馈，并积极寻求来自不同参与者的响应。这一过程将强化用户社区的知识，而这些知识在人工智能通常接受培训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，该项目将创建一个开发社区来源的AI LLM的模型，可以继续进行改进和研究。在项目年度结束之前，将为教师提供beta级聊天机器人，以改进他们的课程计划，活动结构和学习环境，以进行进一步的研究和开发。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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.