How Will Learning Sciences Get Into AI?

Can AI for teachers and students be built on a foundation of what we know about how students learn, namely on the learning sciences? And, if so, how can learning sciences infuse not just one AI product, but potentially all of them? Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran kick off this third season of Future Fluent by talking with two people who are trying to change the “building blocks” of the AI programs used in schools. In this exclusive conversation with Priscilla Chan, cofounder and coCEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and her colleague, Sandra Liu Huang, president of CZI’s Learning Commons division, Jeremy and Betsy explore what they are doing to retool the AI that is permeating edtech.

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September marks the first anniversary of CZI’s Learning Commons, an AI “infrastructure” that any developer can use to build edtech tools. Companies (and yes, individuals, too), can sign up to explore the platform here: platform.learningcommons.org/login.

The platform aims to have three components:

* The Knowledge Graph, which aims to integrate materials such as rubrics, standards and even “misconceptions,” typical mistakes that learners make;

* Evaluators, or ways to assess if AI material is aligned to learning science;

* Agent Skills, or ways to help AI tools build learning science and strong pedagogy into whatever they’re building (say, lesson plans).

Here’s a piece in EdSurge that describes the work. In it, Helen Crompton, executive director of the Research Institute of Digital Innovation in Learning at Old Dominion University, makes an important point: “Once a platform becomes part of the underlying infrastructure upon which many other products are built, it can begin to shape what information is available, what is considered authoritative, what gets measured and ultimately what kinds of educational experiences are created.”

Here’s what Sandra and Priscilla are reading:

* “Build: Investing in America’s Infrastructure“, by Sadek Wahba, managing partner at private equity firm, I Squared Capital.

* School Rethink 2.0, edited by Frederick M. Hess, Michael B. Horn, and Juliet Squire

* The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, which, as Priscilla says, brings home the idea that parenting takes an entire community.

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