We engage in multidisciplinary, iterative, and evidence-based research and development with diverse stakeholders to create new technologies, activities, practices and programs for real-world impact in homes, schools, afterschool programs and online communities. A list of publications for these projects can be found here.
Inclusive AI Literacy & Learning is a curriculum project that seeks to teach AI literacy while emphasizing accessibility, equity and adaptability for all.
DAILy is a middle school AI curriculum focusing on on AI concepts, ethical issues in AI, creative expression using AI, and how AI relates to your future.
The AI & Ethics Project seeks to develop an open source curriculum for middle school students on the topic of artificial intelligence and its ethical implications.
Dancing with AI is a week-long curriculum in which middle school students get to build interactive AI projects using a series of newly developed Scratch extensions allowing for natural interaction.
Students can create and train image classification models in App Inventor.
Bringing AI to middle school during Massachusetts STEM Week with i2 Learning.
A robot kit for high school students to learn about generative AI by teaching a robot to draw.
Embeducation is a web app for middle schoolers that generates word embeddings and plots these in three-dimensional space to show words can be represented by features.
Supervised Polygons helps 6-8 grade students think critically about fairness in AI models by identifying ways that bias can manifest in algorithm-based decisions and exploring user impact.
MIT App Inventor uses block-based coding tools to simplify mobile app development. New blocks simplify Alexa's Skill development and neural network implementation.
This project, supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, is designed to develop new learning games focused on improving children’s vocabulary and early literacy skills.
We developed a novel cognitive-affective architecture that integrates models of curiosity, understanding of mindsets, and expressive social behaviors to advance the state-of the-art of robot companions.
Zhorai is an artificially intelligence conversational agent through which children grades 3-5 can learn about AI.
Scratch helps kids learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and collaborate.
Primary AI for K-2nd grade introduces early elementary school students to robotics and artificial intelligence.
Data and privacy design activities developed for the Girl Scouts of Eastern MA.
The PopBots Platform is a tool to introduce young children to programming, robotics, and artificial intelligence by allowing them to build and program their own robots.
Primary AI for 3-5th grade introduces upper elementary school students to robotics, artificial intelligence, and design thinking.
Use Rock Paper Scissors to create a program that allows the machine to observe and learn from its user's game choices using a Markov Model!
Can an app on your phone be your next therapist? This tutorial will show you how to make your own therapist bot app using App Inventor.
This student guide/tutorial shows you how to use the Personal Audio Classifier website to train an audio model using short 1-2 second recordings.
Gizmo is a simple Arduino robot based off of the PopPet robot created by Jaidyn Edwards, and customized for our K-2, 3-5, and 6-8 grade AI curricula.
In this project you are challenged to create your very first own Voice User Interface (VUI) as you build a voice-driven calculator that can do basic arithmetic operations.
Teaching middle school students the practices and ethical implications of creative machine learning techniques, such as GANs and style transfer.
Various extensions to the Scratch programming languages allow students to build AI-enabled projects.
Here you will learn how to use the new AI technology PoseNet to track key points of your body to create a skeletal model; develop some basic methods to quantify, measure and identify some dance moves.
Would you like to make your own facial filters? In this tutorial, we will be using facial landmark detection to create a filter camera using a new AI technology called Facemesh.
AI Education Peer-reviewed Research Articles and Preprints
Ting-Chia Hsu, Hal Abelson, Natalie Lao, Yu-Han Tseng. (2021). Behavioral-Pattern Exploration and Development of An Instructional Tool for Young Children to Learn AI. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 100012..
PreprintLee, I., Ali, S., Zhang, H., DiPaola, D., & Breazeal, C. (2021). Developing Middle School Students’ AI Literacy. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’21).
PaperWilliams, R. (2021). How to Train Your Robot: Project-Based AI Education for Middle School Classrooms. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’21).
PaperReddy, T., Williams, R., & Breazeal, C. (2021). Text Classification for AI Education. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’21).
PaperLee, I., & Ali, S. (2021). The Contour to Classification game. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21).
PaperAli, S., DiPaola, D., & Breazeal, C (2021). What are GANs?: Introducing Generative Adversarial Networks to Middle School Students. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21).
PaperJordan, B., Devasia, N., Hong, J., Williams, R., & Breazeal, C (2021). PoseBlocks: A Toolkit for Creating (and Dancing) with AI. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21).
PaperWilliams, R., Kaputsos, S., & Breazeal, C (2021). Teacher Perspectives on How to Train Your Robot, A Middle School AI and Ethics Curriculum. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21).
PaperJessica Van Brummelen, Tommy Heng, Viktoriya Tabunshchyk, (to appear 2021). Teaching Tech to Talk: K-12 Conversational Artificial Intelligence Literacy Curriculum and Development Tools. AAAI Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI-21).
PreprintJessica Van Brummelen, Kevin Weng, Phoebe Lin, Catherine Yeo, (2020). CONVO: What does conversational programming need? An exploration of machine learning interface design. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC).
PaperDiPaola, D., Payne, B.H., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Decoding Design Agendas: an Ethical Design Activity for Middle School Students. Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC 2020), 1—10.
PaperAli, S., Payne, B.H., Williams, R., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Constructionism, Ethics, and Creativity: Developing Primary and Middle School Artificial Intelligence Education. International Workshop on Education in Artificial Intelligence K-12 (EDUAI’19), 13381—13388.
PaperAli, S., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Can Children Emulate a Robotic Non-Player Character’s Figural Creativity?. Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ’20).
PaperBhatia, N. & Lao, N. (2020). Using Transfer Learning, Spectrogram Audio Classification, and MIT App Inventor to Facilitate Machine Learning Understanding. International Conference on Computational Thinking Education 2020 (CTE2020).
PaperLao, N., Lee, I., & Abelson, H. (2020). Experiences from Teaching Actionable Machine Learning at the University Level through a Small Practicum Approach. International Conference on Computational Thinking Education 2020 (CTE2020).
PaperDevasia, N., Ali, S., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Escape!Bot: Child-Robot Interaction to Promote Creative Expression During Gameplay. Extended Abstracts of the 2020 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ’20 EA).
PaperJessica Van Brummelen, Phoebe Lin, (2020 in submission). Engaging Teachers to Co-Design Integrated AI Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms..
PreprintXiaofei Zhou, Jessica Van Brummelen, Phoebe Lin (2020 in submission). Designing AI Learning Experiences for K-12: Emerging Works, Future Opportunities and a Design Framework..
PreprintVan Brummelen, J., Weng, K., Lin, P., & Yeo, C. (2020). CONVO: What does conversational programming need?. 2020 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 1-5.
PaperLin, P., Van Brummelen, J., Lukin, G., Williams, R. & Breazeal, C. (2020). Zhorai: Designing a Conversational Agent for Children to Explore Machine Learning Concepts. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 34, 13381—13388.
PaperChen, H., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Teaching and Learning with Children: Impact of Reciprocal Peer Learning with a Social Robot on Children’s Learning and Emotive Engagement. Computers & Education, 150(8).
PaperChen, H., Park, HW., Zhang, X., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Impact of Interaction Context on the Student Affect-Learning Relationship in Child-Robot Interaction. Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 389–397.
PaperTang, D., Utsumi, Y., & Lao, N. (2019). PIC: A Personal Image Classification Webtool for High School Students. Proceedings of the 2019 IJCAI EduAI Workshop.
PaperLao, N., Lee, I., & Abelson, H. (2019). A Deep Learning Practicum: Concepts and Practices for Teaching Actionable Machine Learning at the Tertiary Education Level. IATED2019 Proceedings (12th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation).
PaperOvienmhada, U., Lao, N., & Van Brummelen, J. (2019). Design of a Virtual Tool for Estimating Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading. 2019 International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI), 7724-7732.
PaperVan Brummelen, J., Yeo, C., & Weng, K. (2019). Learning to program conversationally: A conversational agent to further democratize programming. 14th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED2020).
PaperGrover, I., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Semantics-Based Model for Predicting Children’s Vocabulary. Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-19), 1358–1365.
PaperVan Brummelen, J. (2019). Conversational Agents to Democratize Artificial Intelligence. 2019 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 239-240.
PaperVan Brummelen, J., Shen, J.W., & Patton, E.W. (2019). The Popstar, the Poet, and the Grinch: Relating Artificial Intelligence to the Computational Thinking Framework with Block-based Coding. Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Thinking Education, 160-161.
PaperPark, HW., Grover, I., Spaulding, S., Gomez, L., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Model-Free Affective Reinforcement Learning Approach to Personalization of an Autonomous Social Robot Companion for Early Literacy Education. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33, 687–694.
PaperWilliams, R., Park, HW., Oh,L., & Breazeal, C. (2019). PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33, 9729–9736.
PaperAli, S., Moroso, T., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot?. Proceedings of the 2019 on Creativity and Cognition, 359-368.
PaperWilliams, R., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Is for Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Activities on Young Children’s Perceptions of Robots. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–11.
PaperSpaulding, S., Chen, H., Ali, S., Kulinski, M., & Breazeal, C. (2018). A Social Robot System for Modeling Children’s Word Pronunciation. Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (Socially Interactive Agents Track), 1658-1666.
PaperPatton, E.W., Druga, S., & Van Brummelen, J. (2018). Panel: Block Abstractions for AI. Proceedings of the BLOCKS+ at Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH), 1-2.
PaperPark, HW., Rosenberg-Kima, R., Rosenberg, M., Gordon, G., & Breazeal, C. (2017). Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 137-145.
PaperSpaulding, S., Gordon, G., & Breazeal, C. (2016). Affect-Aware Student Models for Robot Tutors. Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems, 864–872.
PaperGordon, G., Breazeal, C., & Engel, S. (2015). >Can Children Catch Curiosity from a Social Robot? Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 91-98.
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