The EngageAI Institute emerged from the confluence of independent lines of investigation that fortuitously intersected in 2019. Principal Investigator (PI) Lester and co-PI Biswas were working on creating artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for education with a focus on interactive narrative and pedagogical agents. Co-PI Hmelo-Silver’s research involved innovating in the learning sciences with a focus on computer-supported collaborative learning. Co-PI Bansal had been advancing statistical natural language processing and machine learning with a focus on multimodal semantics and generalizable deep learning. Recognizing the enormous potential that could be realized by bringing these ideas together and driven by the broad community vision provided by co-PI Roschelle, they created a team spanning their five institutions.
Over the next two years, they considered how powerful story-driven learning experiences might be generated for learners in a broad range of contexts including classrooms and museums. They developed and refined an ambitious research agenda around narrative-centered learning environments featuring embodied conversational agents and multimodal learning analytics, all driven by (and driving) advances in natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning, and all with the goal of creating effective, engaging learning experiences. They added the expertise of their colleagues in the learning sciences, computer vision, and ethics, and they partnered with a host of educational organizations across the country.
In 2021, through the National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institutes program, the NSF launched the NSF AI Institute for Engaged Learning headquartered at North Carolina State University with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Indiana University, Vanderbilt University, and Digital Promise as lead partners.
Recent Events & Updates
- September 2024: EngageAI All-Hands team meeting held at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.
- July 2024: Co-PI Biswas gave the Test of Time Award Talk at the Seventeenth International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM24), titled “Assessing Student Learning in Open Ended Learning Environments From Sequential to Multimodal Data Analysis”.
- July 2024: EngageAI team members presented three papers at the 25th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED24).
- June 2024: EngageAI team members Tiffany Barnes, Sarah Burriss, Joshua Danish, and Ole Molvig contributed to the recently released brief from CADRE, Toward Ethical and Just AI in Education Research.
- June 2024: EngageAI team members Caitlyn Snyder, Gautam Biswas, and Caleb Vatral won the CSCL Outstanding Long Paper award at the ISLS 2024 conference for their paper “Investigating Collaborative Problem Solving Behaviors during STEM+C Learning in Groups with Different Prior Knowledge Distributions“.
- April 2024: NC State research software engineer and computer science doctoral student Vikram Kumaran successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on automatically generating interactive narratives using natural language instruction.
- April 2024: PI Lester presents at NSF National AI Institutes on Education Symposium and Generative AI Panel at AERA 2024.
- March 2024: EngageAI team members had 3 papers accepted for publication at CVPR 2024.
- March 2024: Interview with PI Lester about the EngageAI Institute published in Winter/Spring 2024 issue of Edge Discovery Magazine.
- February 2024: AI Magazine article on the EngageAI Institute published.
- February 2024: Co-PI Jeremy Roschelle debated AI in education at the Brookings in Silicon Valley: Global Education and the Role of Technology event hosted by HP in Palo Alto, CA.
- January 2024: EngageAI team members Krista Glazewski and Jonathan Rowe presented to the NC Governor’s Teacher Advisory Committee about using and teaching about AI in education.
- January 2023: NC State computer science doctoral student Fahmid Fahid successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation and has joined Meta.
- December 2023: Co-PI Cindy Hmelo-Silver and Senior Personnel David Crandall participated in a “Conversations with the Connected Professor” faculty panel on teaching and learning with generative AI.
- December 2023: Co-PI Jeremy Roschelle shared insights about AI in education with the Association of California School Administrators.
- November 2023: Partnered with the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, as well as CoSN and SparkNC, for the AI in K-12 Education Convening.
- October 2023: Attended and participated in the 2023 Summit for AI Institutes Leadership (SAIL), including presentations at AI Institute Expo Day.
- September 2023: Participated in the NSF AI Institutes Congressional Showcase on Capitol Hill.
- September 2023: NC State computer science doctoral student Dan Carpenter successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation.
- August 2023: Held second EngageAI Institute Forum in Silicon Valley with 80 educational practitioners, researchers, developers, and funders to discuss how generative AI can empower educators as learning designers.
- August 2023: Held Summer 2023 All-Hands Meeting at the Digital Promise offices in Redwood City, CA
- July 2023: TWIML AI Podcast episode, “Unifying Vision and Language Models with Mohit Bansal | The TWIML AI Podcast” with Co-PI Mohit Bansal
- May 2023: Digital Promise contributes to a new report published by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology – Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations
- April 2023: Co-PI Cindy Hmelo-Silver elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- April 2023: Co-PI Jeremy Roschelle and Pati Ruiz from Digital Promise led a highly interactive session with school superintendents and leaders at the League of Innovative Schools meeting in Birmingham, AL
- April 2023: Indiana University doctoral student Haesol Bae will be joining the Department of Educational Theory and Practice (ETAP) at the University at Albany, State University of New York as an assistant professor in Learning and Teaching with AI in Fall 2023
- March 2023: Managing Director Jonathan Rowe presented a keynote at the LAK 2023 Workshop on Situating Affect in Learning Analytics
- May 2022: World Bank EduTech Podcast episode, “Enabling New Forms of Student Learning through Artificial Intelligence” with PI James Lester and Co-PI Jeremy Roschelle
- April 2022: Open position for a postdoctoral scholar in AI in Education at Indiana University – Bloomington
- Dec 2021: Held virtual retreat of Institute key personnel
- Nov 2021: PI Lester gives plenary address at the National Academy of Education
- Oct 2021: Official launch of the EngageAI Institute!