Envisioning the Future of AI-Enhanced Learning: Visions of Three NSF Institutes

This is an expertise exchange in the CIRCLS’23 Expertise Exchange session

Session Leaders: Peter Foltz, University of Colorado Boulder; Cindy Hmelo-Silver, Indiana University; H. Chad Lane, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; James Lester, North Carolina State University

In this session, researchers from three NSF-funded AI Institutes (EngageAI, iSAT, and INVITE) will present the long term goals of their research and describe the vision of future AI-enhanced learning capabilities each is pursuing. Panelists will discuss implications of rapid advances in AI on topics ranging from classroom teaching and learning, collaborative learning, informal learning, and learning with games and interactive/immersive technologies. Panelists will also describe their approaches leveraging AI-based technologies in service of broadening participation in STEM, such as with culturally congruent content and modeling of social and emotional aspects of learning, and discuss challenges that must be addressed to ensure that research happening now can lead to equitable and fair AIED systems in the future. Given the visions laid out by the panelists, discussion will be opened up around several critical questions:

  • What kinds of data will be needed to inform these systems of the future, and how can we ensure ethical use of that data by researchers and industry?
  • What analytics will be appropriate for such data and how will these tools be used to inform support that is given, either by AI systems or teachers?
  • What assumptions are being made that may not hold up in the decades to come?
  • What implementation, contextual and societal factors will be most critical for understanding and helping learners of the future?