AI Institute for Engaged Learning

人工智能的新突破为加速与STEM教育中紧迫的国家挑战相关的创新创造了重要而及时的机会。人工智能的进步正在使互动、参与和包容达到新的水平。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人工智能研究所将设计、开发和研究人工智能驱动的叙事学习环境，以创建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，计算机视觉和机器学习以及人工智能伦理方面进行基础人工智能研究。在这些基础性进展的基础上，该研究所将对具有丰富的人工智能驱动的虚拟代理和强大的多模态感知能力的叙事学习环境进行使用启发式人工智能研究，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教育的独特创新建立联系。其研究愿景将是通过创建生成性，协作性的人工智能驱动的叙事学习环境，使不同的学习者成为下一代STEM劳动力，使学习者在学校，博物馆和自己的社区中深入参与。这一愿景将通过与不同利益相关者的联系来了解，以确保研究所的学习环境符合道德设计，并促进多样性，公平和包容性。 NSF人工智能研究所将通过汇集来自四所大学的不同研究人员团队，在STEM教学和学习方面取得变革性进展（北卡罗来纳州州立大学;印第安纳州大学;查佩尔山的北卡罗来纳州大学;范德比尔特大学），以及一个教育非营利组织（数字承诺），这将使教育从业者，政策制定者和产品开发人员参与工作。该研究所的合作伙伴包括K-12学校，博物馆和非营利组织的全国网络。该研究所将创建叙事学习环境，生成动态定制的互动故事，以满足个别学生和小团体的需求和兴趣，并在多种设置（教室，课后计划和博物馆）。该研究所的研究有三个互补的重点，以创造：（1）叙事学习环境，产生引人入胜的互动故事为基础的问题场景，引发丰富的沟通，需要协调，并激发合作创造力;（2）体现对话代理技术与多种沟通方式（语音，面部表情，手势，凝视和姿势），以支持参与学习互动。嵌入式会话代理将由自然语言理解，自然语言生成和计算机视觉的进步驱动;以及，（3）创新的多模态学习分析框架，该框架分析来自学生的对话，凝视，面部表情，手势和姿势的并行多模态数据流，因为他们彼此交互，与教师和具体的会话代理。该奖项体现了NSF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.