With the rapidly growing recognition of the role that computer science is playing in every aspect of society, enrollments in introductory computer science courses are increasing at an unprecedented pace. As a result of this phenomenal growth, departments of computer science are seeing extraordinary demand for introductory computer science courses. The accelerating growth in enrollments poses significant challenges for introductory programming instructors, who must teach increasingly larger classes while providing effective, engaging learning experiences for students. The overarching objective of this project is to develop an introductory programming teaching support environment, INSIGHT, that will enable instructors to readily understand their students��� progress through introductory computer science coding activities. INSIGHT will fundamentally change classroom dynamics by supporting both students and instructors.

Recent years have seen a growing recognition of the national STEM workforce shortage. Although problems abound in all STEM disciplines, the shortage is particularly acute in information and communications technology. This is especially true in artificial intelligence (AI), a field of computer science that focuses on the design of computing systems that solve problems involving human-like capabilities including reasoning, learning, and natural language. Engaging middle-grade students, especially those from underserved populations, in artificial intelligence through the creation of lifelike AI for digital games offers a promising approach to encouraging students to pursue innovative computing careers. The AI Play project will engage students in a broad range of computing activities centered on creating AI for games. The project will see the development of a learning environment and curriculum that introduces artificial intelligence into middle school emphasizing connections to the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards. The AI Play project will host a series of five-day camps for underserved populations where students will engage in hands-on learning activities under the guidance of teachers and undergraduate computer scientists, who will serve as mentors and role models as the students engage in artificial intelligence, while designing and developing AI for games. The final year of the project will see an evaluation of the AI Play program and its impact on students������������������ learning and interest in artificial intelligence.

It has long been recognized that drawing can be a powerful approach to learning. Learning-by-drawing activates a complex set of cognitive processes that requires students to deeply engage with a subject matter. The project centers on the design, development, iterative refinement, and investigation of a sketch-based science learning environment. Specifically, the project will focus on the development and piloting of a sketch-based science learning environment to support students������������������ conceptual understanding of science with an emphasis on modeling. The project will culminate in a pilot study to investigate the effectiveness of the sketch-based learning environment for improving students������������������ factual understanding, their inferential understanding, and their ability to engage in science modeling. By utilizing a mixed methods approach integrating quantitative and qualitative work with learning analytics, it is anticipated that the project will yield theoretically-driven, empirically-based advances in sketch-based science learning environments that significantly improve conceptual understanding of science in upper elementary students.

Recent years have seen a growing recognition of the importance of computer science experience for today's K-12 students. Knowledge of computing is essential for students' success throughout their academic and professional careers. Engaging elementary students in computational thinking through the creation of rich interactive computational narratives offers an innovative approach to building students������������������ computational thinking practices and interest in computing. This project will engage students in a broad range of computing activities centered on creating digital interactive narratives. The project will see the development of a narrative-centered maker environment that introduces computational thinking into upper elementary science education emphasizing connections to the Next Generation Science Standards.

Developing adaptive instruction for teams requires a new generation of Adaptive Instructional Systems that can accurately assess team behaviors in real-time. To effectively adapt tutoring to the complex dynamics of teams calls for the creation of computational models that can operationalize and assess team performance and deliver coaching and feedback to team members as they complete simulated training events. Recent advancements in deep learning-driven natural language processing and reinforcement learning offer significant promise for achieving these capabilities. The goal of this project is to develop tools and methods that can be used by team training researchers to automatically analyzing team communication data and devise tutorial planners that can deliver run time feedback during team training tasks in synthetic environments. In particular, the project will (1) investigate how advances in deep learning-driven natural language processing can be leveraged to analyze team discourse in order to help researchers automatically assess team communication and team performance and (2) investigate how data-driven machine learning approaches can be leveraged to devise tutorial planning models that can automatically deliver run-time feedback during team training tasks in simulated environments.

Effective teaching is the cornerstone of K-12 education. However, effective teaching occurs in complex workplaces that require teachers to cope with the real-time demands of providing effective learning experiences for large classrooms of students by skillfully bringing to bear their expertise in pedagogy and classroom management. Although there is enormous potential for enhancing teaching with technology-rich support that leverages artificial intelligence (AI), limited work has been done to investigate how emerging AI technologies can bring about fundamental improvements to the teaching profession. With recent advances in AI technologies for natural language processing, machine learning, and user-adaptive support, the time is ripe for transforming the professional lives of teachers. The objective of the proposed research is to design, develop, and evaluate the Intelligent-Augmented Cognition for Teaching (I-ACT) framework featuring intelligent cognitive assistants for K-12 teachers. A unique feature of I-ACT afforded by recent advances in machine learning will be its ability to optimize teacher support for collaborative learning at the individual student, group, and classroom levels

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a technology that promises to have unprecedented societal impact. Integrating AI into the science curriculum holds significant potential for introducing students to deep science inquiry while simultaneously providing them with an experiential understanding of the role that AI can play in science problem solving. The proposed project will center on the design, development, and investigation of PrimaryAI, a curricular framework that integrates science and AI for upper elementary science education. Featuring an immersive game-based learning environment, PrimaryAI will use problem-based learning as the foundation for science inquiry in which students grades 3-5 will utilize AI tools to solve complex ecosystem problems within an immersive science adventure. Students will engage in scientific problem solving tightly integrating AI and science to learn about ecosystems phenomena, mechanisms, and components that comprise a system, and make inferences about change over time for biological systems. The project will use design-based research to understand how best to integrate AI and science in upper-elementary science classrooms.

Children encounter artificial intelligence (AI) on a daily basis and may have limited recognition that they have interacted with an AI-driven system or misunderstandings around what AI can do. Understanding the technologies behind these systems is essential for all students, especially young children who are coming of age in a highly evolving technological landscape. This project will create story-centric plugged and unplugged activities to support upper elementary student learning of AI concepts as well as develop a set of self-report and multiple-choice instruments for assessing student attitudes and understanding around AI.

First responders are seeing a significant increase in the amount and types of data available when responding to emergencies. To maximize the value of these data, user interfaces need to be designed that provide first responders with critical real-time information. Intelligent user interface design, in which the data and information presented to the user is adapted and tailored to the needs of individual users based on analytic information (e.g., expertise, task state, location), offers significant potential for improving performance, reducing mental workload, and facilitating effective decision-making. This project builds on a decade of research by the project team in developing intelligent game-based virtual learning environments. The goal of the project is to develop a virtual reality emergency response scenario that will serve as a test bed for evaluating the impact of intelligent user interfaces on first responder performance. In addition, the project will investigate the impact of providing adaptive support on task proficiency and whether alternative interaction methods (gesture-based vs. voice-based) reduce cognitive load and improve system interaction.

Automated scenario generation offers considerable promise for addressing the needs of simulation-based training. Given recent advances in machine learning, including artificial neural networks and deep learning, data-driven approaches to automatically generating scenarios that are customized to the cognitive and affective characteristics of individual learners hold great potential. This project will investigate a critical research question for adaptive simulation-based training: how can we devise generalizable, data-driven scenario generation models that dynamically adapt training events to achieve target learning objectives in simulation-based virtual training environments? To answer this question, the project will investigate a data-driven framework for dynamic scenario generation that formalizes the task as a deep reinforcement learning problem. We will demonstrate the generalizability of the approach by investigating its implementation in multiple distinct simulation-based virtual training environments.