ECR Projects

Explore past and current fundamental STEM education research projects across the three research areas that NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program funds, as well as across ECR funding types. Other search filters draw from both NSF's data and the ECR Hub's hand coding of award abstracts.

Ninth-grade biology students create cell models using clay.

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Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Enhance the Creativity of the STEM Professional Workforce by Transforming Education for Neurodiverse Learners

Effective Years: 2021-2024

This project is funded by the Mid-Career Advancement program that supports opportunities for scientists and engineers to substantively enhance their research program through synergistic and mutually beneficial partnerships. This MCA project embraces a transformative approach to address the critical national need for a creative professional workforce by increasing the participation of neurodiverse students in STEM disciplines. Scientific and technological breakthroughs are crucial to address the large-scale, complex, and multifaceted challenges facing our nation. The unparalleled talents and unique abilities of neurodiverse students present a distinctive opportunity for our nation to address these difficulties. However, the excessive reliance of our STEM education on textual content and the linguistic complexities of STEM texts may disengage and discourage neurodiverse individuals, such as those with dyslexia. This project capitalizes on the unique knowledge and expertise gained from multiple previously NSF-funded projects and a strong multidisciplinary research team with expertise in neurocognitive science, neuroimaging, STEM education, dyslexia, and artificial intelligence (AI). This bold, convergent research builds on the latest advancements in AI as well as opportunities provided by neuroimaging technologies to advance a scalable, personalizable text simplification tool for middle school students with dyslexia. This project will be at the forefront of the shift towards personalized assistive tools to enhance the participation of neurodiverse students in STEM education. The project has the potential to significantly enhance the learning of middle school students with dyslexia, who despite their unique talents in spatial visualization and divergent thinking, remain highly underrepresented in STEM fields. Though this project is focused on individuals with dyslexia, the proposed framework may be further broadened to include other groups, like students with Autism, and English learners (ELs).

This project includes three integrated activities to advance knowledge and generate critical data for the development of a personalized assistive tool for students with dyslexia. This project aims to: 1) adapt large pretrained natural language processing (NLP) models for STEM text simplification tasks, 2) develop a large dataset of feedback from students with dyslexia and use reinforcement learning (RL) to customize the model for this population, and 3) use features of electroencephalogram (EEG) data to measure neurocognitive functions related to reading comprehension to personalize the model. The student feedback dataset and individual EEGs collected during the reading tasks may significantly benefit future research in dyslexia, neurocognitive sciences, STEM education, and machine learning. The outcomes of the study may encourage the advancement of personalized learning using brain data. The research partnership formed through this project facilitates the development of large-scale multidisciplinary studies aimed at enhancing the academic success of neurodiverse students. An industry collaborator will be involved early in the project to ensure a broad dissemination of the assistive tool and project outcomes. This project is expected to enhance the well-being of an academically and socially vulnerable group of students by dismantling barriers to participation. The approach of this project may significantly advance the development of personalized assistive learning technologies and present new opportunities for unique students to succeed in our traditional education system.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.