AI-bility: Cultivating AI Awareness in Schoolchildren

We observed the abundance of smart toys, adaptive learning applications, and digital assistants for schoolchildren on the market. These products are artificial intelligence (AI) based conversation...

Responding to the problematisation, we pursued two main objectives: 1: To explore and understand how schoolchildren interact with different types of AI-based conversational agents and how they perceive these conversational agents compared to their existing social others (such as family, friends, and teachers). This objective has been addressed in work packages 1 (conceptual development) as well as 2 and 3 (field study). 2: To equip schoolchildren as digital natives and their caregivers with hands-on knowledge in dealing with the rapid advancement of smart technologies, especially those that appear to be social and human-like in either appearance or intelligence. This objective has addressed in work package 4 (project blog and a collection of short stories).

We divided our main project activities into four work packages (WPs): WP 1: Conceptual development. We analyzed available AI-based conversational agents on the market that specifically target schoolchildren and evaluated their design purpose, working mechanisms, and potential pros and contras. We developed a typology of these conversational agents. WP 2: Preliminary field study. We conducted a focus group discussion with 50 schoolschildren aged 11-13 years old to explore how they perceive and interact with AI-based conversational agents for learning and leisure activities. WP 3: Large-scale experiment. We compared schoolchildren's learning strategies and outcomes when using three different conversational agenst (text only, voice only, and voice and gestures) and traditional search engine. WP 4: Dissemination to a wide audience. We shared the insights directly to participating parents and teachers. We also regularly posted contents (project news and stories) on our project blog www.ai-bility.eu. Finally, we published scientific papers and student's theses to share the insights we gained from the project.

We would like to highlight four main results of our project: 1: We synthesized a typology of conversational agents for schoolchildren and published the typology in a premier Information Systems journal. 2: We gained insights into children's perception and use of conversational agents for learning and leisure. 3: We conducted a scientific experiment to understand whether and how children can benefit from different types of conversational agents in learning (knowledge acquisition and retention). 4: We disseminated the knowledge gained throughout the project on our project blog (https://ai-bility.eu/blog). 5: We wrote and published stories for children to share the knowledge with families in a fun and engaged way (see https://ai-bility.eu/stories).