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FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren

Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Assessment for Learning (AfL) to Improve Learning and Teaching in 21st Century (AI4AfL)

Alternative title: Kunstig intelligens (KI) for vurdering for læring (VfL) for å styrke læring og undervisning i 21 århundre (KI4VfL)

Awarded: NOK 11.2 mill.

Understanding how to engage in learning is crucial for the 21st century learners. Assessment for learning (AfL) which has been a priority area in Norwegian schools since 2010 is one of the strategies to develop such an understanding. However, educational practice shows that AfL is a time and resource consuming process. In addition, teachers need to develop a profound understanding of the AfL approach to be able to design meaningful learning activities. The project Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Assessment for Learning (AfL) to Improve Learning and Teaching in 21st Century (AI4AfL) aims to develop AI technology that is able to analyse students’ texts and offer semantic, syntactic and sentimental feedback. Such feedback is tailored to the needs of individual students, it can be used to improve students’ texts and help teachers to facilitate the writing process. The project will examine how students interact with the technology and the feedback it offers and how teachers organise and facilitate students’ learning during the writing process with the AI technology. In doing so, the project will develop new knowledge about students’ learning with the AI technology and the development of their capacity in learning to learn. The AI4AfL is an interdisciplinary project that will combine the efforts of the pedagogy, IT researchers and Hypatia Learning company to achieve the projects’ goals and foster collaboration among research environments, a private company and schools in Halden Municipality. In addition, two PhD candidates will be employed in the project. Such collaboration is crucial not only to develop technology that supports pedagogical practice but also to minimise the gap between the developers of educational technology, teachers and students who are consumers of such technology. In doing so, the project’s participants will contribute to developing new knowledge about how AI can improve pedagogical practice and students’ learning in Norwegian classrooms.

The AI4AfL project aims to develop new Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that is able to analyse written texts and provide syntactic, semantic and sentimental automatic feedback. The project will also develop new knowledge about how teachers organise and facilitate AfL practices with AI technology to enhance students’ capacity in learning to learn. The research in the project will provide a broader insight among teachers, school owners and teacher educators into how AfL practices supported by AI technology may contribute to the development of students’ understanding about what it means to learn in English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) writing classes. In doing so, the project will offer an approach to develop students’ capacity in learning to learn. AI4AfL is a collaborative interdisciplinary project combining the efforts of Educational and IT researchers, a private actor (Hypatia), school owner (Halden municipality), teachers and students in the lower secondary schools. The project consists of five work packages and adopts a mixed methods approach to gradually develop the target AI technology and to examine AfL learning and teaching practices in the target (with AI technology) and the comparison (without AI technology) classes in lower secondary schools in Halden municipality. AI4AfL will make empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions to the field of computer sciences (by developing new AI technology able to provide individually tailored syntactic, semantic and sentimental feedback on the written text) and to the field of pedagogy (by examining learning and teaching with AI technology, development teachers’ and students’ digital competence, competence building in technology enhanced AfL practices and students’ capacity in learning to learn). This knowledge is much needed to ensure a research-based development of teachers’ PDC, competence building in technology enhanced AfL practices to educate lifelong learners in the 21st century.

Funding scheme:

FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren