Teaching Tech to Talk: K-12 Conversational Artificial Intelligence Literacy Curriculum and Development Tools

With children talking to smart-speakers, smart-phones and even\nsmart-microwaves daily, it is increasingly important to educate students on how\nthese agents work-from underlying mechanisms to societal implications.\nResearchers are developing tools and curriculum to teach K-12 students broadly\nabout artificial intelligence (AI); however, few studies have evaluated these\ntools with respect to AI-specific learning outcomes, and even fewer have\naddressed student learning about AI-based conversational agents. We evaluate\nour Conversational Agent Interface for MIT App Inventor and workshop curriculum\nwith respect to eight AI competencies from the literature. Furthermore, we\nanalyze teacher (n=9) and student (n=47) feedback from workshops with the\ninterface and recommend that future work leverages design considerations from\nthe literature to optimize engagement, collaborates with teachers, and\naddresses a range of student abilities through pacing and opportunities for\nextension. We found students struggled most with the concepts of AI ethics and\nlearning, and recommend emphasizing these topics when teaching.\n The appendix, including a demo video, can be found here:\nhttps://gist.github.com/jessvb/1cd959e32415a6ad4389761c49b54bbf\n