This award supports participants to EAAI-11, The Second Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence. EAAI-11 will be collocated with the Twenty-fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-11), to be held August 7-11, in San Francisco. EAAI-11 provides a venue for researchers and educators to discuss pedagogical issues and share resources related to teaching artificial intelligence (AI) and using AI in education across a variety of curricular levels (K-12 through postgraduate training), with a natural emphasis on undergraduate and graduate teaching and learning. The EAAI symposium will seek and disseminate contributions, such as model assignments, syllabi, projects, and ready-to-adopt materials for teaching AI, address how to more effectively teach AI in multi-disciplinary contexts involving subjects like biology or economics, and how themes from AI can be used generally to enhance education and engagement of students in Computer Science and STEM disciplines. EAAI will include a session "How AI and AI education can improve CS education and outreach."
(EAAI) was held on August 9-10, 2011, in conjunction with the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-11). The symposium was established in response to growing community interest in sharing best practices for (1) how to teach Artificial Intelligence and (2) how AI can serve as a motivating problem for teaching concepts in other areas of Computer Science, especially in introductory CS courses. EAAI-11 included an invited talk, paper and presentations, Model AI Assignments, a Teaching and Mentoring Workshop, a Best Educational Video award, and a Robotics Track. Specific outcomes of the symposium include: The Model AI Assignments program not only included presentations on the assignments, but also provided a persistent online repository (http://modelai.gettysburg.edu) that promotes the sharing of ideas and best pedagogical practices among AI educators. The Teaching and Mentoring Workshop brought together current and future AI educators in an engaging, interactive setting to stimulate creativity in teaching strategies and to facilitate the creation of professional contacts and mentoring relationships. The focus of the activities was on increasing student understanding, motivation, engagement, and retention, and led to adoption of several new ideas in the classrooms of attendees (see "Feedback," below). A panel discussion about the ACM/IEEE Computer Science Curriculum Revision, featuring several members of the curriculum committee as panelists, resulted in concrete suggestions about how the curriculum elements that related to artificial intelligence could be improved or extended, including whether AI should be considered a "core" CS requirement or a "flavor"/motivation topic, specific AI problems that could attract students to CS, and how to raise awareness of AI in daily life (e.g., spam filtering, Google ranking). There were 71 pre-registrants for EAAI-11, 48% higher than last year. Scholarship funding provided by NSF, in conjunction with additional support from the Stanford Computer Science Department and Google, Inc., funded 14 EAAI-11 attendees, including 6 professors, 6 graduate students, and 2 undergraduate students. Feedback from Attendees Feedback from NSF-funded EAAI-11 attendees was very positive. Comments include: "Overall EAAI-11 was a great success, it was stimulating and I learned many techniques which I can use in my classroom." "I learned a lot about the field of education in artificial intelligence and how instructors are discussing unique, innovative, and creative ways of getting students involved in artificial intelligence." "The discussions balanced well between practical matters and more abstract philosophical topics, and almost every session offered both an applicable take-away message and a thought-provoking, broader idea." "I enjoyed EAAI much more than I usually enjoy AAAI. The atmosphere was cooperative, rather than the usual competition." "I found Dr. Sahami’s talk on active learning in the classroom to be a great example of how to bring the subject alive and keep students involved in the lecture." "I particularly enjoyed the workshop session which allowed us to work with the other EAAI attendees to develop a short lesson plan, and the discussion that followed." "I was impressed overall with the collection of talks and activities as on?topic, modern, and relevant." "As for the logistics of the day, it was appreciated that EAAI attendees could still make it to the big morning keynotes of AAAI without missing anything."
