AI Elementary

Student Engagement

AI technology can provide interactive learning environments, where students get timely responses and prompts from automated agents. Converting a passive learning experience, such as reading of a textbook, into an interactive, personalized dialogue that sparks student participation carries significant potential for enhanced learning. 

Expert Opinions:

Ying Xu

Ying Xu is an Assistant Professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on designing AI technologies that promote language and literacy development, STEM learning, and wellbeing for children and families.

Ying’s key takeaways: 

  • When it comes to student engagement, the real question isn’t simply “screens versus paper,” but whether the learning experience meets the students where they are. A paper book is useless to a child who can’t read, just as passive listening is less effective than active interaction.
  • AI’s potential lies in its ability to adapt to a child’s reality by asking questions, prompting curiosity, and giving active feedback that keeps them engaged. Pedagogical questions with definite answers can help build confidence, while also giving students the chance to ask their own questions and explore a deeper understanding

How do we spark curiosity
and keep the flame going?

  • Research by the MIT Media Lab shows that students’ expressiveness strongly correlates with how many questions they are asked. To truly capture attention, AI has to be used in ways that align with the student’s personality, curiosity, and pace, creating an environment where learning feels like a dialogue, not a lecture
  • Engagement also depends on the broader learning context. AI literacy matters, but it’s not the core issue: Motivation is. If students turn to AI for homework answers, the root problem often lies in an outdated curriculum, not in the student’s choice of tools.
  • We need to redesign learning experiences so they are relevant, challenging and rewarding enough to spark genuine student interest. 

Goren Gordon

Prof. Goren Gordon has six academic degrees, a BA, MSc and PhD in Quantum Physics, a BMSc, MBA and another PhD in Neurobiology. He did his postdoc in MIT Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group. Goren was the head of the Curiosity Lab in Tel-Aviv University and is currently an Associate Professor of Informatics in Indiana University, Bloomington. He studies mathematical models of curiosity, implementing them in curious social robots and using them to assess and promote curiosity and other 21st century skills in children.

Goren’s key takeaways: 

  • Social Robots can do things that AI bots cannot do: They can look at you, create eye contact, show attention, they have facial expressions, they can point and do gestures.  These are critical tools for promoting learning and curiosity. For example, when a robot is introduced into a learning environment and is exhibiting curiosity and enthusiasm about learning, that enthusiasm is contagious: children exposed to such a robot show more interest and motivation for learning. 
  • Curiosity exists in all children, but it is sometimes suppressed. The goal of the classroom, and in particular of AI use in the classroom, is to disinhibit curiosity and provide the backdrop needed for natural curiosity to manifest itself. AI is therefore a part of the toolset teachers can use to remove barriers for curiosity and engagement and to create an “enabling environment”. 
  • AI and robots are different from humans because students know they are not judgmental, and perceive them as neutral. It is much easier to make mistakes, and to learn and try out new things in front of technology. AI will not think we are stupid, or dismiss us, or punish us with poor grades or with social pressure. It’s ok to try out. AI will never tell us we are stupid. Research has shown that AI can be used to encourage children to ask more questions. AI can be constructed deliberately to promote growth mindset, curiosity and grit, to encourage self confidence. Curiosity and the intrinsic desire to learn is the main barrier for any learning . 
  • There is a concern with having screen time at the expense of social interaction. Children and teachers might opt to approach AI as the ultimate teacher and this is particularly concerning for elementary schools, where human connection is so critical.. Because of this concern, Goren is working on social robots for peer learning in groups, where the robot serves as the social facilitator in a peer learning environment.  Learning together in a small group, and through that machine based facilitator, students learn more, listen more, interact more, and feel more engaged.  [add link to paper on avatar facilitating a group activity in zoom]

Can technology bring students closer together instead of apart?

Social robots might just hold the answer.

  • Research shows social emotional learning also improves on lessons facilitated by an avatar. 
  • Goren is designing an activity for language learning in kindergarten through an open source social robot. You can implement it in your school and read more about it [here]. 
  • Part of the barrier for using technology is digital literacy. Goren’s team has designed a tool for teachers to upload and design their lesson plans and materials so that teachers would feel empowered to use the social robots. expanding accessibility for teachers with no technical background.