The University of California, Irvine is studying the potential for artificial intelligence to improve learning among school children around the world.
“In terms of AI, there is a lot of great work that’s happening, but it’s being done on fairly small populations,” said Candice Odgers, a UCI professor of psychological science. “No one’s yet created a true national benchmark.”
Odgers is part of a team that is bringing together experts in computer science, technology and education to study the effect of technologies on children, such as whether it causes sleep deprivation. They are building a chatbot, conducting surveys and holding workshops.
They’ve already built a network of 1,000 scientists and are working with a university in South Africa and companies like Microsoft Corp.
$11M Donation
Odgers co-leads a UCI program called Connecting the EdTech Research EcoSystem (CERES) along with Gillian Hayes, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the graduate division.
Their initiative in 2021 won a five-year, $11 million donation from the Jacobs Foundation, a Swiss-based nonprofit that invests in children to help them reach their potential.
“It’s been a really timely investment by the foundation for us as researchers because it’s allowed us to do things together that we could never do alone in our own labs,” Odgers told the Business Journal.
One example is a collaboration among UCI, University of California, Riverside, Chapman University and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
The four universities deployed a WhatsApp chatbot to get assessments of what types of educational materials are needed in impoverished areas of South Africa. The project has made 1,000 assessments thus far.
The next step for CERES is conducting a survey study on people’s perceptions of AI.
The survey will sample 2,000 parents, 500 teens and 200 teachers to assess their concerns for the new technology.
Hayes and Odgers said they plan to make an open-source tool from the collected data so others may access it.
CERES is also collaborating with the Ethan Kay Foundation and UCI trustee Carol Choi to potentially launch a research network similar to CERES in South Korea.
Industry Partnerships
Hayes and Odgers held an annual meeting for CERES at the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach last month.
One panel focused on new directions in youth-centered technology and featured industry partners from Duolingo, foundry10, Google, IBM and Nickelodeon.
The discussion highlighted advancements in digital learning, including Duolingo’s recent announcement of new multi-subject lessons that will teach math and music in addition to languages in an updated app.
Last year, teachers and students engaged with 2,591 educational apps, a fivefold increase since 2018, according to Karl Rectanus, senior vice president of Instructure and moderator of the panel.
“Learning in the U.S. has become a tech-enabled endeavor,” Rectanus said.
Schools across Orange County are increasingly engaging with more of these kinds of educational applications, he added.
Better Sleep
Hayes and Odgers come from opposite ends of the research spectrum.
As a psychologist, Odgers has studied adolescents and their mental health for the last 20 years.
When Odgers first started as an assistant professor at UCI, she tracked children’s smartphone use during the emergence of the digital revolution about 10 years ago.
A computer scientist by trade, Hayes approaches child education from a machine perspective.
“It’s a quest to always think about how we can make people’s lives easier, having technology take some of that load off of them,” Hayes said.
Their combined expertise in mental health and digital platforms has led them to tackle a large parental concern for their children: sleep deficits.
In partnership with a non-governmental organization called War Child Holland, CERES is developing a technology-based method that will help increase sleep duration and quality.
Research has found that sleep and emotional health are closely linked, especially as kids hit adolescence, Odgers said.
The study is specifically centered around youth immersed in high-intensity conflict zones where war may have a psychological impact on their lives.
Hayes and Odgers are looking to address the concern that technology shouldn’t be used before bedtime.
“If you have smart tools that understand what’s been going on in your day, what your sleep goals are and so on, they can start to help you and coach you to not ruminate on the bad things and instead reflect on the positives,” Hayes said.
The UCI Edge
The pair said other universities lack UCI’s advantages such as having access to its School of Education, medical center and psychologists.
Odgers returned to UCI in 2016 after leaving in 2012 to direct the Center for Child Health and Family Policy at Duke University.
UCI’s entrepreneurial spirit and potential for impact is what drew Odgers back to the campus, she says.
“I envisioned coming back here and building something that mattered,” Odgers said. “There’s not a lot of places where you can have as big of an impact.”
