The INVITE AI Institute with Charity Freeman, H. Chad Lane, and Blair Lehman

In this episode, we discuss the NSF-IES INVITE AI Institute that seeks to address the question of how AI-enabled educational technologies can address the grand challenge of “Education for All”? The INVITE Institute is motivated by the pressing need to address educational inequities and broaden participation in STEM fields, particularly for underserved and underrepresented students. By developing AI-driven learning technologies that support not only cognitive skills but also crucial noncognitive factors such as persistence, academic resilience, and collaboration, INVITE seeks to create more inclusive and effective learning environments. The institute's research goals include advancing foundational AI techniques in areas like machine learning, natural language processing, and adaptive systems, while simultaneously applying these innovations to create personalized, culturally responsive learning experiences that foster both academic success and personal growth. INVITE research focuses on formal K-12 STEM education with deep involvement of teachers and partnering organizations who are engaged in research with the INVITE team.

Beyond its core research agenda, the INVITE Institute is committed to extensive outreach and community engagement. INVITE is working to build capacity for AI in education through teacher training programs, undergraduate research experiences, and partnerships with K-12 schools and community organizations. The institute's efforts extend to creating a diverse pipeline of future AI researchers and practitioners through initiatives like summer internships for underrepresented students and the development of new AI-focused courses at the university level. By bridging cutting-edge AI research with evidence-based educational practices, the INVITE Institute aims to make a lasting impact on STEM education, ultimately working towards a future where all students have the opportunity to thrive in an increasingly technology-driven world.

More resources and information about our guests below the video.

https://youtu.be/upeaq2xI7PM

Readings and Resources:

• http://invite.illinois.edu
• https://invite.illinois.edu/publications/
• Some resources that inspired us:
  • https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/teaching-adolescents-become-learners-role-noncognitive-factors-shaping-school
  • https://paultough.com/how-children-succeed/
  • https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262533461/stuck-in-the-shallow-end/

Episode Guests

Charity Freeman serves as K-12 CS Education Advisor and Community Engagement Lead at the INVITE AI Institute. As a certified high school CS teacher, professional development facilitator, and curriculum developer, she brings a wealth of expertise and perspective to the co-design processes of INVITE’s research agenda. Her work as a teacher educator and research advisor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign involves strategizing broadening participation in computing (BPC) initiatives to improve equitable access and outcomes in CS education throughout the state.

Charity is a Governor-appointed member of the Illinois P-20 Council, as well as a Co-Chair of its statewide task force on Scaling Equitable CS Education. She also serves as Chairperson and Teacher Education Representative for the Computer Science Teachers Association’s (CSTA) national Board of Directors.

Chad Lane is a Professor of Educational Psychology and Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is also the Associate Chair in the Department of Educational Psychology and the Director of the NSF INVITE AI Institute. Chad’s research focuses on the design, use, and impacts of intelligent technologies for informal STEM learning. He has over 100 publications in a variety of areas, including intelligent tutoring, educational games, computer science education, and narrative-based learning environments. Broadly, his work involves blending techniques from the entertainment industry (that foster engagement) with those from artificial intelligence and intelligent tutoring systems (that promote learning), as well as running studies to better understand whether and how the resulting learning experiences impact learners. His PhD is in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2004), and prior to joining UIUC, he spent ten years as a research scientist and Director of Learning Sciences Research at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. He can be reached at hclane@illinois.edu. For more on Chad, see http://hchadlane.net.

Blair Lehman is a Research Scientist in the Personalized Assessment area of the Research Institute at ETS and serves as the co-lead of the Learner Modeling research strand on INVITE. Blair’s research focuses on understanding students’ experiences with educational activities (assessment, learning) and leveraging that knowledge to design tasks that promote positive experiences (e.g., engagement), provide personalized support to facilitate recovery from negative experiences, and leverage knowledge of students’ experiences to provide contextualized feedback reports. These different lines of research come together in the Culturally Enhanced Caring Assessments framework that has guided my research since 2017 and seeks to provide personalized educational experiences that consider who the student is outside of the activity through understanding of their personal, social, cultural, and linguistic characteristics along with their experience completing the activity.