ABOUT

The Intelligent-Augmented Cognition for Teaching (I-ACT) project seeks to consider how artificial intelligence technologies can support teachers in their work to help students engage in deep, collaborative, authentic, and meaningful science learning. Building on advances in artificial intelligence, the I-ACT project is investigating how intelligent cognitive assistants for teachers can transform teacher work to significantly increase teacher quality of work-life and teacher performance. In doing so, we seek to better understand how AI might come to play a role in the future K-12 STEM classroom in ways that support teachers in engaging students in rich, deep, and collaborative inquiry learning.

In addition to teachers’ crucial role in supporting student learning and development, K-12 STEM teachers are critical to the US economy. However, the teaching profession faces several long-term challenges, including demand exceeding supply at every level and an extraordinarily high attrition rate for new teachers (with low job satisfaction cited as a key reason many leave the job). These problems are especially notable for STEM teachers. Therefore, these developments call for innovations that improve K-12 STEM teachers’ quality of work-life and performance. The I-ACT project builds on our work with EcoJourneys, a collaborative game-based learning environment for middle school science, to bring rich problem-based learning to K-12 classrooms.