The NSF PAL Ideation Workshop has ended. The final report is available here, and the workshop recordings and slideshow PDFs are available here.

An ideation workshop conducted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, October 18-19, 2022 and October 24-25, 2022.

Supported by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Convergence Accelerator Program (Con-Accel), the primary objective is to develop a convincing and compelling rationale for NSF to establish a Con-Accel funding track in 2023 to support creation of smart and integrated platforms, devices and processes for education technology.

BENEFITS FOR SOCIETY

Project Rationale

Current educational technologies have many liabilities. They do not leverage basic research on learning, nor have a culture of continuous improvement, nor meet the needs of diverse learners, nor leverage the growing power of computers. Significant technology exists, as does knowledge of what needs to be done. What is needed now is a concerted effort among different sectors to create an agenda that leads to real solutions for immediate use. One issue is the disconnected, fragmented, and often closed nature of different communities: educators, administrators, parents, commercial ventures, not-for-profit organizations, stakeholders, researchers, and government organizations.This workshop will support communities to reason about fruitful near-term (three year) approaches for scaling up innovative pedagogies. Experts in academia (learning science, AI, human-computer interaction, education, psychology), industry and government will identify barriers and solutions to the delivery of high-quality online education; they will use best practices in design, generate plans for future development and testing, and leverage technology and new modes of platform design.They will plan how to increase the number of trials of new products; identify promising interventions; test more often and fail faster; and evaluate conditions and circumstances that increase the probability of successful products.

Broader Impacts

The workshop will have broader impacts where it matters most – with students, adults, informal learners, and workers (many from underrepresented backgrounds) enabling them to more successfully learn, upskill and reskill.

Thousands of instructors will benefit from open-access to AI-driven power tools for differentiated digital instruction and timely professional development. Educational institutions will benefit from the collective use of these tools, ensuring greater continuity in teaching, and thus greater likelihood of student success.

Communities and industry partners will benefit from a significant increase in the number of skilled workers, convenient, timely, low-cost teaching and training, and new tools to identify and remedy skills-based workforce inequities.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS

Chris Dede

Senior Research Fellow
Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Myk Garn

Assistant Vice Chancellor for New Learning Models
University System of Georgia

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PRODUCTION AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT

THE NSF CONVERGENT ACCELERATOR (C-ACCEL)

Launched in 2019, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator program (Con-Accel) addresses national-scale societal challenges through a convergence approach and innovation processes that are use-inspired.

CALL FOR PROJECT IDEAS

As part of the deliverables, the PAL ideation process seeks to identify research projects that address the future of AI and Data Science in education and that meet certain broad criteria.

CRITERIA

The following overarching priorities will guide appropriate projects:

Projects will impact a broad range of knowledge systems, including traditional core fields of study, work-related training, applied life skills training, and contextual competencies that can be deployed life-long and life-wide.

Customized Education Systems to Provide Personalized Learning

Projects will develop rich new AI models and inference methods to gain a deeper understanding of students and corresponding analytical methods to infer key student factors from data sets. New models are important for all learners, especially adult learners, who tend to have idiosyncratic attributes and can benefit significantly from personalized learning strategies catered to their individual needs.

AI research issues here include technologies that understand, model, infer, and respond to real human learning through multimodal data integration, generalization of learned models to new tasks, interpretable machine learning, FEATful (fairness, ethics, accountability and transparency) data-driven models, and data-augmented learning science as well as neuro-symbolic modeling, large-scale ML, and natural language processing (NLP).

Strong Multi-Organizational Partnerships

Projects must demonstrate collaboration, engagement and partnership between and among stakeholders and/or by the outcome(s) intended for the project. It will not be sufficient to simply assert that the research will support certain population segments; representatives of the population segments must be genuinely engaged in the development and implementation of project research, testing and findings.

The ideal project will attract and enliven new communities of AI researchers, learning scientists, and instructors who will engage in rapid learning experiments with diverse student populations. Teams are expected to forge partnerships among stakeholders from several disciplines.

WORKSHOP

THEMES

The PAL Ideation Workshops will focus on the following five topical themes that will be featured in our workshop sessions, keynote presentations, and project ideas.

THEME A

Design, Develop, and Testing

This theme includes development of educational technologies, intelligent tutors, games, and user interfaces; development of new modules or functionality within existing systems and the design of systems and interfaces currently under development. The skill set includes AI, machine learning, models, UX/UI design including needs analysis, wireframing, prototyping, iterative design research, and human factors.

THEME B

Assessment of Educational Research

This theme includes conducting experimental studies in educational settings. The skill set includes expertise working with teachers and students, analyzing data, and interpreting experimental findings. Research focuses on implementing and testing educational technologies in various educational settings (e.g., classrooms, online).

THEME C

Learning at Scale

This theme includes large scale research, better understanding of learning, predicting learning outcomes, and enhancing learning at scale. The skill set includes expertise in conducting and analyzing experimental studies, A/B/n experimental design, database management, R, Python, advanced statistical methodologies, and learning analytics (e.g., machine learning), use of machine learning to address issues of personalization, equity, cost, customization, usability. How can data be collected, processed, and used responsibly for all communities?

THEME D

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

This theme includes development of equitable, supportive, affirming, and beneficial environments for students of all cultures, backgrounds, and identities. We need to directly address pervasive ethnic and racial disparities and examine models and data sets for bias (gender, race, nationality, culture), including advocating for marginalized populations. We focus only on short term pain points, we need to solve for the longer run majority who are facing crucial life conditions that could benefit from better life-long design. This theme will identify benefits that accrue from diversity.

THEME E

Entrepreneurial, Not-for-profit, and Government Digital Learning Systems

This theme will bring AI and the data revolution to businesses, non-profits, and government organizations. For example, organizations will use AI to improve processes that require reading and understanding text; such tools act as performance multipliers that increase speed and accuracy, decrease cost, and enable businesses to make the best use of time/expertise. Supporting such organizations, e.g., through Kickstarter or Venture Capital will put in place mechanisms to translate research and development into products.

RECORDINGS

View recordings for the NSF PAL Ideation Workshop.

KEYNOTE EXPERTS

The following people will be delivering keynote remarks at the PAL Ideation Workshops.

REGISTRANT ORGANIZATIONS

Individuals from the following organizations and institutions are currently registered for the PAL Ideation Workshops (List as of October 22, 2022).

GET IN TOUCH

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