Author: Jeremy Roschelle
Generative AI is a story machine. Yes, Generative AI can make a lesson plan, help a student with math homework, or support a student as they develop an essay. But we believe there are other, more ambitious and impactful uses for STEM learning. In particular, we focus on using generative AI to breathe life into narrative elements like story, plot, scene, character and dialogue—and to make it easier for educators and instructional designers to craft STEM stories for classroom use. The EngageAI Institute is a partnership of four universities and one nonprofit dedicated to developing and investigating the potential to revitalize STEM education by accelerating the development and research of Generative AI for crafting STEM stories.
How does this support STEM education?
The focus on creating stories addresses two needs in STEM education—the need for students to find conventional STEM instruction engaging and the need for students to post questions and examine evidence in the material. All learners, however, are strongly predisposed to becoming engaged through stories; for all of recorded history, stories have the fundamental way to engage young people in learning. In contrast to something like a conventional science lab or a conventional science problem set, a story provides a context to activate student collaboration and discourse about STEM concepts.
Why was the EngageAI Institute created?
The EngageAI Institute was launched amidst the generative AI revolution, and its mission is to take the concept of story-based STEM learning to new heights, while reducing both time and cost of incorporating stories in the classroom. To do so, EngageAI is pursuing three types of research and development:
- Advancing the use of Generative AI to enable designing and delivering powerful STEM stories, with plots, characters, scenes and dialogues—with great ease, in less time, and with the kinds of dialogic features needed to drive STEM learning.
- Developing and investigating student collaborative learning with curricula that are based around a storyline. The aim of the development is to exemplify collaborative narrative-centered learning in a sequence of classroom activities, and then to study how the narrative enables learning (and to identify any further issues to address).
- Creating the foundational research tools that power both the development and research indicated above. Here a strong emphasis of EngageAI is on multimodal tools, as the envisioned STEM stories are not just text: they include situations where what students say, how they gestures, what they look at, and actions they take in a game-like environment are all important to the progress of the learning.
How are educators involved in the EngageAI Institute?
While undertaking these primary research and development activities, EngageAI has also been working with educators in several ways: (a) a Practitioner Advisory Board that guides the work (b) a series of annual events which bring educators and research together for a day-long focused meeting and (c) by developing a generative AI tool that educators can use to create (or modify) stories for their STEM classroom.
The EngageAI Institute is led by NC State University, with strong partnerships among University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Vanderbilt University; Indiana University; and Digital Promise. The partnership across these universities brings together an unusual coalition of expertise ranging from scientists who work at the foundations of generative AI to researchers who focus on co-design with educators.
Starting later in 2025, EngageAI will be launching its opportunity for educators to become directly involved in our AI tool development. To be the first to know, sign up for our interest list here.