Establishing AI Literacy before Adopting AI

Abstract

With the recent explosion of AI applications in our everyday lives, it is critical for teachers and students to become AI literate, that is, to understand the role of AI in our lives, to evaluate its pros and cons, and to use it productively. We describe a set of short-format, modular AI literacy curricula developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in collaboration with an implementation partner, i2Learning, to help educators introduce their students to AI and its responsible and ethical use. We used an online questionnaire to collect data from 265 individuals across the globe on how the curricula were implemented in 2022–23, including 190 teachers who collectively implemented the curricula with almost 12,000 students. Teachers reported an increase in their knowledge of AI concepts, an increase in optimism about the potential benefits of AI to society, and greater confidence in their ability to contribute to the future of AI. Similar results were reported for students. We also conducted 17 virtual interviews with teachers to elicit feedback on the curricula and to better understand how they adapted the curricula for their own contexts.

Keywords:

• Generative artificial intelligence
• AI
• ChatGPT
• AI literacy
• AI literacy
• curricula
• engineering design
• instructional materials

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Box 1 Example of developing an AI-based solution to a real world problem in the Teachable Machines curriculum.

This excerpt is from an interview with the teacher based in a Title I magnet school in North Carolina who taught Teachable Machines as part of an Emerging Technologies course.

They have to use Teachable Machine to. . .design some sort of AI solution that can help people with disabilities. And then they have to make a prototype of that using Teachable Machine. . . They do really well. . . I had a student. . .where his idea was that if somebody is color blind then it might be more difficult for them to be able to pick out produce without being able to touch it. And so he trained Teachable Machine on red delicious apples. And so we found lots of pictures on the Internet of apples that were underripe and overripe and just right. And so he was able to train it. And then we showed it some other pictures and it worked really well. He was very excited, like jumped out of his chair. He was like “I’m going to make this happen!”

Then. . . we extend that a little bit further . . .with so now. . . you’ve got something on your phone you can hold up to the display of apples and have it pick one for you that’s your desired level of ripeness. . . In my mind, I was like maybe you could come up with something that actually picks produce, like a robot that can pick produce off the tree in an agricultural setting that is the desired amount of ripeness. But his thought process actually went to having robots do the grocery shopping for us. . . If the AI could tell how ripe the apple is, then you could say ‘I want 5 ripe apples’ and now the robot could actually pick them out at the stand at the grocery store.

Box 2 Example of student recommendation for a school policy on ChatGPT use

Table

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00368555.2024.2308316.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fiona Hollands

Fiona Hollands (email: [email protected] | X: @EdResearcher | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-hollands-4731037b/ | ORCID: 0000-0002-1172-9310) is the Founder and Managing Director of EdResearcher, an independent research, evaluation, and R&D organization. Previously, she was a senior researcher at Teachers College, Columbia University where she worked with the Center for Technology and School Change and the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education.

Cynthia Breazeal

Cynthia Breazeal (X: @cynthiabreazeal | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-breazeal-1792317/) is a professor of media arts and sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she founded and directs the Personal Robots group at the Media Lab. She is the MIT dean for digital learning and the Director of the MIT-wide Initiative on Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (raise.mit.edu). MIT RAISE is a research and outreach effort that advances access and inclusivity in AI education to people of all ages and backgrounds with a focus on K12 and the workforce.