STARKVILLE – A Mississippi State University research team is looking to improve high school students’ competency in artificial intelligence through a project funded by a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
Led by Principal Investigator Yan Sun, who is an associate professor in MSU’s Department of Industrial Technology, Instructional Design and Community College Leadership in the College of Education, the team of professors and undergraduate students will work with 60 students and 15 computer science teachers over the next three years to help them sharpen their understanding of AI systems.
“Everybody nowadays is some kind of consumer of AI,” Sun told The Dispatch. “Our goal is that we want our students not just to be consumers of AI. We want them to be creators of AI.”
During the program, yearlong cohorts made up of teachers and students will start by participating in a weeklong summer camp at MSU, where they will learn the basics of AI, like preparing image data and training image models.
“We will start to build their knowledge about image classification and how to build, starting with some smart games, like how to train a robot to become a self-driving car,” she said.
When the cohorts start the school year, they’ll have access to undergraduate computer science students who will serve as mentors, Sun said. The mentors will help the participants as they create a smart control system during the fall semester, which they’ll showcase the following summer.
A smart control system combines machine learning, computer vision and decision-making to perform tasks with little to no human intervention. An example of this type of system would be a hospital door that was programmed to only open for people wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sun said.
Throughout the program, Sun said AI biases and fairness will also be a key component participants will learn about.
“The whole period of time, especially in the summer camp, we’ll show the students machine learning and AI are very helpful, but they have their limitations,” she said.
Participants will learn to identify and address biases and vulnerabilities in AI systems, particularly with image classification and computer vision models, while exploring solutions for preventing unfairness in AI systems.
The grant is funded by NSF’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers program, which aims to engage students and teachers and increase their interest in STEM and information and communication technology careers.
Sun said the research team chose to specifically target student populations that are underrepresented in STEM fields.
“In our proposal we wanted to not only target underrepresented minority students,” she said. “We also wanted to also target female students because they are really underrepresented in STEM fields.”
Participants will be assessed throughout the program to determine how the learning experiences affected their competency of AI.
“Another thing we want to see (with the assessments) is how this experience can increase their interest in STEM, especially in AI fields, and how this will affect their motivation to maybe pursue related skills in an undergraduate program,” Sun said.
Sun said five school districts have agreed to participate in the program, including the West Point Consolidated, Lowndes County, Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated, Louisville Municipal and Choctaw County school districts.
SOCSD Communications Director Haley Montgomery said the district is excited any time students can get ahead when it comes to understanding emerging technology.
“We always want to give our students the opportunity to have an edge on understanding … new technology that comes out, so they’re able to be well versed … to be able to choose for themselves how they might utilize that technology in the future,” she told The Dispatch. “So anything that allows us the opportunity to incorporate that … for our students to show them how technology can be used as a tool to accomplish their goals, I think that’s really valuable to us.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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