Teaching Tech to Talk: K-12 Conversational Artificial Intelligence Literacy Curriculum and Development Tools

TL;DR

This study evaluates a conversational AI curriculum and tools for K-12 students, highlighting challenges in teaching AI ethics and learning, and providing recommendations for improving engagement and understanding.

Contribution

It introduces an AI literacy curriculum and interface for K-12 education, and assesses their effectiveness in teaching AI concepts and competencies.

Findings

Students struggled most with AI ethics and learning concepts.

Teacher and student feedback highlight the need for design improvements.

Recommendations for future curriculum development and engagement strategies.

Abstract

With children talking to smart-speakers, smart-phones and even smart-microwaves daily, it is increasingly important to educate students on how these agents work-from underlying mechanisms to societal implications. Researchers are developing tools and curriculum to teach K-12 students broadly about artificial intelligence (AI); however, few studies have evaluated these tools with respect to AI-specific learning outcomes, and even fewer have addressed student learning about AI-based conversational agents. We evaluate our Conversational Agent Interface for MIT App Inventor and workshop curriculum with respect to eight AI competencies from the literature. Furthermore, we analyze teacher (n=9) and student (n=47) feedback from workshops with the interface and recommend that future work leverages design considerations from the literature to optimize engagement, collaborates with teachers, and addresses a range of student abilities through pacing and opportunities for extension. We found students struggled most with the concepts of AI ethics and learning, and recommend emphasizing these topics when teaching. The appendix, including a demo video, can be found here: https://gist.github.com/jessvb/1cd959e32415a6ad4389761c49b54bbf