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Abstract To date, many AI initiatives (eg, AI4K12, CS for All) developed standards and frameworks as guidance for educators to create accessible and engaging Artificial Intelligence (AI) learning experiences for K‐12 students. These efforts revealed a significant need to prepare youth to gain a fundamental understanding of how intelligence is created, applied, and its potential to perpetuate bias and unfairness. This study contributes to the growing interest in K‐12 AI education by examining student learning of modelling real‐world text data. Four students from an Advanced Placement computer science classroom at a public high school participated in this study. Our qualitative analysis reveals that the students developed nuanced and in‐depth understandings of how text classification models—a type of AI application—are trained. Specifically, we found that in modelling texts, students: (1) drew on their social experiences and cultural knowledge to create predictive features, (2) engineered predictive features to address model errors, (3) described model learning patterns from training data and (4) reasoned about noisy features when comparing models. This study contributes to an initial understanding of student learning of modelling unstructured data and offers implications for scaffolding in‐depth reasoning about model decision making. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topicScholarly attention has turned to examining Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy in K‐12 to help students understand the working mechanism of AI technologies and critically evaluate automated decisions made by computer models.While efforts have been made to engage students in understanding AI through building machine learning models with data, few of them go in‐depth into teaching and learning of feature engineering, a critical concept in modelling data.There is a need for research to examine students' data modelling processes, particularly in the little‐researched realm of unstructured data.What this paper addsResults show that students developed nuanced understandings of models learning patterns in data for automated decision making.Results demonstrate that students drew on prior experience and knowledge in creating features from unstructured data in the learning task of building text classification models.Students needed support in performing feature engineering practices, reasoning about noisy features and exploring features in rich social contexts that the data set is situated in.Implications for practice and/or policyIt is important for schools to provide hands‐on model building experiences for students to understand and evaluate automated decisions from AI technologies.Students should be empowered to draw on their cultural and social backgrounds as they create models and evaluate data sources.To extend this work, educators should consider opportunities to integrate AI learning in other disciplinary subjects (ie, outside of computer science classes).
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High school students’ data modeling practices and processes: From modeling unstructured data to evaluating automated decisions
It’s critical to foster artificial intelligence (AI) literacy for high school students, the first generation to grow up surrounded by AI, to understand working mechanism of data-driven AI technologies and critically evaluate automated decisions from predictive models. While efforts have been made to engage youth in understanding AI through developing machine learning models, few provided in-depth insights into the nuanced learning processes. In this study, we examined high school students’ data modeling practices and processes. Twenty-eight students developed machine learning models with text data for classifying negative and positive reviews of ice cream stores. We identified nine data modeling practices that describe students’ processes of model exploration, development, and testing and two themes about evaluating automated decisions from data technologies. The results provide implications for designing accessible data modeling experiences for students to understand data justice as well as the role and responsibility of data modelers in creating AI technologies.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1949110
- PAR ID:
- 10416959
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Learning, Media and Technology
- ISSN:
- 1743-9884
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 19
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2023.2189735
