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{ .top-left .fixed-medium-width } The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is part of a nine-university consortium led by the University of Buffalo that has been awarded a $20 million grant by the National Science Foundation to establish a national institute that develops artificial intelligence systems that identify and assist young children with speech and/or language processing challenges. The award will establish the AI Institute for Exceptional Education to advance foundational AI technologies, human-centered AI design, and learning science that improve educational outcomes for young children.
The institute will help address the nationwide shortage of speech-language pathologists and provide services to children ages 3 to 10 who are at increased risk of falling behind in their academic and socio-emotional development – issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hedda Meadan-Kaplansky, Margaret Joy Smale Valpey Professor in Special Education, is one of 30 researchers working with the new institute.
{ .top-left .fixed-medium-width } Nigel Bosch, assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences (iSchool) with a joint appointment in the department of Educational Psychology at the College of Education and Dong Wang, associate professor in the iSchool, have undertaken a three-year study, funded by the National Science Foundation to help students more accurately estimate their knowledge by using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
“From a number of studies, the overall pattern is that almost everybody overestimates their knowledge,” says Bosch. “As you learn more, you learn that there’s always more to learn, and you realize how much you don’t know. There’s a lot of research in educational psychology that shows how important it is to be able to estimate how much you know and what you know so you can more effectively plan and study the right things and with the right amount of time.” The National Science Foundation study is part of its Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning program.
{ .top-left .fixed-medium-width } Mike Tissenbaum, assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, focuses on collaborative learning and knowledge communities, and how children develop STEM and computational literacies when engaged with technology-enhanced learning.
“AI is really good at taking a lot of complex, realtime data and processing it and using the kinds of patterns that often would take weeks to do qualitatively or quantitatively.
It can also be used to make suggestions for grouping students for optimal collaborations and discussions based on their understanding of the content. And it can provide students the materials or prompts to scaffold discussions. AI is not replacing the teacher. It takes care of the grinding, hard-to-do work so the teacher can focus on the students. It can really empower the teacher and the students.”
{ .top-left .fixed-medium-width } Luc Paquette, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction is using data to analyze the strategies employed by the students who are working to debug computer programs.
“AI can support students in terms of thinking about resources that might be useful to them or in suggesting problems for them to solve. It can help them make meaningful and informed decisions about what kind of activities would be most useful for them at this point in time. It can personalize the learning experience so that you don’t recommend something that is either too easy or too difficult for them.
I’m thinking about AI as a way to scale up the kind of analysis that allows us to learn about learning and also as a complement to other research approaches.”
{ .top-left .fixed-medium-width } The College’s Bureau of Educational Research (BER) hosted a panel series to discuss recent progress in ChatGPT, particularly how it impacts the research of teaching and learning. The panels provided an opportunity to hear directly from research teams currently conducting ChatGPT research on the Illinois campus. Jessica Li, Associate Dean for Research and Director of the Bureau of Educational Research, and a professor of Human Resource Development served as moderator. Education faculty panelists included: Bill Cope, professor, Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, Nigel Bosch, professor, Educational Psychology, and Cynthia D’Angelo, professor in Educational Psychology and Curriculum & Instruction.