- CIRCLS Stories
- Emergent Impact
- Equitable Co-Design
- Exploration and Discovery
- Acknowledgments
Keunjae Kim, Indiana University
“These experiences have strengthened my commitment to equitable technology integration in K-12 education, aiming to create inclusive learning opportunities that benefit underrepresented groups, such as female, non-binary, and rural students.”
My participation in the CIRCLS’23 Convening as an Emerging Scholar has profoundly influenced my work. The convening helped refine my vision, focusing on responsible AI usage and empowering students to create tangible AI-driven projects. Keynote speeches, roundtables, and networking with scholars provided valuable insights for scaling my work. Dr. Marcelo Worsley’s keynote on empowering learning communities through multimodal technologies inspired me to prioritize social justice and accessibility in my research. Dr. Meredith Broussard’s keynote on algorithmic bias underscored the importance of addressing ethical issues in AI, shaping my approach to problem-solving. Leading a roundtable discussion on generative AI tools for counterfactual questions broadened my understanding of innovative approaches. These experiences have strengthened my commitment to equitable technology integration in K-12 education, aiming to create inclusive learning opportunities that benefit underrepresented groups, such as female, non-binary, and rural students.
Figure 1:
a and b: An AI garbage can, and an AI pill sorter created with microcontrollers, sensor, and actuator
c and d: Students testing their AI artifacts to ensure the AI model and codes are functioning properly
David Lockett, Meharry School of Applied Computational Sciences
Through these collaborations, we’ve gained valuable insights into emerging technologies and pedagogical approaches that integrate AI and data science into learning environments.
Participation in CIRCLS has significantly shaped the direction of our work in AI and data science education. Through these collaborations, we’ve gained valuable insights into emerging technologies and pedagogical approaches that integrate AI and data science into learning environments. The interdisciplinary nature of these programs has broadened my perspective on how AI can be ethically and effectively applied to enhance student learning outcomes. Additionally, the networking opportunities have led to new partnerships with other researchers and educators, enabling the development of more comprehensive and innovative AI-driven educational tools. These experiences have not only informed my research methodology but also inspired new project ideas that align closely with NSF’s vision for advancing AI in education.
Nikolas Martelaro, Carnegie Mellon University
“The CIRCLS events have helped our team learn from others and consider new ideas in evaluating how people are learning and what strategies we can employ to help them do their work better.”
The NSF RETTL was my first major grant as a faculty and kickstarted a line of work on how designers and engineers learn to work with AI-based tools. It has led me down a path of researching how designers think and how we can support designers in thinking more deeply. The CIRCLS events have helped our team learn from others and consider new ideas in evaluating how people are learning and what strategies we can employ to help them do their work better. The program has also fostered my team’s growth in providing undergraduate research experiences for students. In the last few summers, we have hosted four students who have contributed directly to the systems we are building and the studies we are running.
Son Pham, Nha Viet Institute
This exposure has not only inspired new research questions but also deepened my insights into innovative approaches, allowing me to align my research more closely with evolving educational needs.
Participating in CIRCLS and NSF EXPs has significantly shaped the trajectory of my work. Engaging with scholar-practitioners at CIRCLS’23 and the EngageAI Forum 2024 has enriched my understanding of current educational challenges and provided a platform to exchange ideas across disciplines. This exposure has not only inspired new research questions but also deepened my insights into innovative approaches, allowing me to align my research more closely with evolving educational needs. Together with my work on teacher preparation in Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED), I am now decisively moving towards exploring workforce orientation in the AI era. These experiences have equipped me to navigate my research and practice more strategically, ensuring relevance and impact in the field.
Breanne Litts, Utah State University
This community has shaped not only the trajectory of my work and willingness to take risks, but also who I am as a scholar and how I think about research, innovation, and equity.
“In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve grown up in and with this community. The Cyberlearning program funded the makerspace grant that I had the privilege of working on under the leadership of Drs. Erica Halverson and Kim Sheridan, and I had the honor of supporting the organization of the 2014 Cyberlearning Summit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have made it priority to attend the summit/convening every year since. The high stakes/high rewards nature of the various evolutions of the CIRCLS-related NSF programs coupled with the diligent efforts of CIRLCS staff to cultivate inclusive and expansive communities, has yielded in a uniquely encouraging and inspiring community of scholars, practitioners, educators, and designers. This community has shaped not only the trajectory of my work and willingness to take risks, but also who I am as a scholar and how I think about research, innovation, and equity.
For the makerspace grant, our learnings are best summarized in two Harvard Education Review articles: Drs. Halverson & Sheridan’s “The maker movement in education”” and our team’s “”Learning in the making: A comparative case study of three makerspaces.”
For our RETTL project, while still ongoing, we’ve learned a lot about how to design through an equitable and community-centered approach. Some of our thinking is available in the following publications:
Roghayeh Barmaki, University of Delaware
Community building is the key outcome of these events that I cannot find any alternatives to.
“For me, or for most of interdisciplinary PIs like me, finding the exact aims and scopes of my proposed project, and where it fits within the broad landscape of the NSF programs has always been a challenge. These events like Convening, or community exchange, or AI and Literacy Working Groups empowered me to interact more with NSF Program directors and other experienced PIs to help me see the boundaries more clearly and also most importantly, to communicate my science and innovation in the proposal writing more explicitly. These efforts helped me to secure a sole-PI grant from NSF EHR already. Also serving in the panels has helped me a lot as well to gain clarity even further about communicating my science better.
As a computer scientist working on educational applications, I always used CIRCLS as my inspirational resource to identify like-minded scholars, research projects, NSF, and other programs to shape my research path. For example, funded RETTL Projects, community reports, working groups, and most importantly, Emerging Scholars are very helpful in connecting me with the cognizant program officers or leading experts in the field.
As another valuable resource, the CIRCLS Convenings have been instrumental for me to explore the avenues for future research, not only by meeting and talking to the PIs of these projects, but also by showcasing my own expertise, even though I was not funded by RETTL/RITEL myself yet.
The community is very vibrant and interdisciplinary and I always enjoy to discuss ideas and get insights for the research problems I am trying to solve in education. So, all together all of these have been invaluable, open-access assets to shapen my research. Finally, I have established new collaborations and some of these lead to new grant ideas that we hope to get it funded by the programs of interest. Community building is the key outcome of these events that I cannot find any alternatives to.”
Chad Dorsey, The Concord Consortium
The excitement on the bus was palpable as we wove through DC traffic toward the National Geographic building. This event was going to be the start of something big, we felt. Indeed, the February 2012 Cyberlearning Summit, an event that would give birth to CIRCLS only a handful of months later.
The excitement on the bus was palpable as we wove through DC traffic toward the National Geographic building. This event was going to be the start of something big, we felt. Indeed, the February 2012 Cyberlearning Summit, an event that would give birth to CIRCLS only a handful of months later. I remember I was checking my slides when Bill Finzer leaned over to my seat and said, “I’ve changed my title. I’m going to call for creating the field of data science education.” My quizzical response at the time was to ask what exactly that was. But his talk the next day explained it perfectly and did much more than that.
That talk indeed marked a turning point, after which K-12 data science education would become an ever-more-recognized idea and eventually a field of education and research in its own right. But don’t take my word for it; the data speaks louder than any impact story. That point where a Google Trends graph for “”data science education”” first ticks upward? February 2012. The date of that first Cyberlearning summit.
Bonnie Sutton, National Collaboration for Digital Equity
Access to people, projects and resources enabled me to participate in national and international outreach efforts and to share ongoing research, develop local, national and global knowledge and expertise for the benefit of K 12 educators.
“My personal experience was a demonstration of the power of digital equity and the effectiveness of kickstarting the uses of technology in varied learning environments. Initially my involvement in the use of technologies in school was piecemeal and contested by supervisors who were not technologically involved. The first NSFGrant was a passport to the creditably of new ways of learning which gave some acceptance and funding. But involvement in CIRCLS was a jumpstart to further exploration and involvement and integration across the learning landscape with ideational scaffolding supported in education. Because I came from a limited technology experience it was a powerful demonstration of the effectiveness experience in my preparation for basic classroom experience it enhanced my ability to bring others with me to participate in developing teaching techniques in technology.
Access to people , projects and resources enabled me to participate in national and international outreach efforts and to share ongoing research, develop local, national and global knowledge and expertise for the benefit of K 12 educators.
I, armed with knowledge from this community the knowledge and skills of CIRCLS, was selected to discuss, discuss distribute and demonstrate this knowledge by projects from the White House and to participate in Supercomputing that involved other educational programs. Digital Equity was demonstrated.
Nikolas Martelaro, Carnegie Mellon University
We are now exploring how to automate thoughtful questioning and assistance for designers and engineers.
Our research has found that providing support to help designers and engineers learn to work with AI tools might be well served by having systems that question the user and support thinking processes over automating their work. We have explored different strategies, such as asking questions and providing hints on how to work with an AI, finding that some strategies work well in some cases – but the right question posed at the right time can change the trajectory of a design session and help someone go from failing to work well with the software to being productive. We are now exploring how to automate thoughtful questioning and assistance for designers and engineers. The impact of this work could one day lead to AI design partners that help people think more deeply and better set up problems that can be solved with AI tools.
Son Pham, Nha Viet Institute
This exposure has not only inspired new research questions but also deepened my insights into innovative approaches, allowing me to align my research more closely with evolving educational needs.
Participating in CIRCLS and NSF EXPs has significantly shaped the trajectory of my work. Engaging with scholar-practitioners at CIRCLS’23 and the EngageAI Forum 2024 has enriched my understanding of current educational challenges and provided a platform to exchange ideas across disciplines. This exposure has not only inspired new research questions but also deepened my insights into innovative approaches, allowing me to align my research more closely with evolving educational needs. Together with my work on teacher preparation in Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED), I am now decisively moving towards exploring workforce orientation in the AI era. These experiences have equipped me to navigate my research and practice more strategically, ensuring relevance and impact in the field.
