MSU helps high school students, teachers explore innovative applications of AI
When you think of artificial intelligence, what comes to mind?
For many, it’s text-based prompts. But for Mississippi State researchers, it’s much broader. As they look to the future of AI applications, they’re introducing the next generation to a new world of possibilities.
This summer, MSU hosted high school students and teachers for a weeklong camp filled with innovative, hands-on activities focused on machine learning. But the fun didn’t end with camp. The MSU interdisciplinary team will continue to work with the cohort throughout the school year. Supported by a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant, the project aims to promote AI competency and career readiness.
Yan Sun, an associate professor of instructional technology in MSU’s College of Education, serves as the project’s principal investigator. The collaborative effort also includes Jingdao Chen and Zhiqian Chen, assistant professors of computer science and engineering, as well as undergraduate mentors. Over the course of the three-year grant, the team will work with 60 students and 15 teachers from high schools in rural areas of the Magnolia State.
A Paradigm Shift
The idea for the project stemmed from the team’s observation of the rapidly changing AI landscape and its impact on education. Sun believes that with the explosion of AI, it’s time for a fundamental shift in computing education. Traditionally, it has been focused on programming, which involves giving a computer a set of instructions for performing a specific task.
“AI is changing everything in our daily life–how we work, how we live. So, it’s time for us to also have a change in computing education,” Sun said. “With our project, instead of just focusing on programming, we’re introducing a new paradigm focused on computational action, emphasizing the empowerment of students to use their computational skills to address real-world problems and contribute to positive social change.
“When students are programming in the traditional sense, the machine simply follows explicit instructions. It’s not really ‘thinking,’” Sun explained. “But with computational action, students will be training the machine to recognize patterns and make decisions, which mimics intelligent behavior. That’s why we need to teach students to think in fundamentally new ways—very different from how we taught programming in the past.”
This new approach is a learning curve for not only students but also their teachers, which is why the team is including high school computer science teachers in the project.
“We’re hoping the teachers will implement what they learn through our project in their own classrooms,” Sun said. “Traditionally, K-12 teachers and university researchers have been two separate academic communities. But we want to use this project to link the two communities and serve as a future resource for teachers.”
Getting Hands-On
During the summer camp, the MSU team engaged participants from Clay and Lowndes counties in creative games and activities that incorporated image classification, a cutting-edge AI technique. In simple terms, image classification is the process of training a computer to recognize and categorize images through machine learning, which enables the computer to detect patterns and make decisions based on data.
For Tullos Walker, a 10th grade student at New Hope High School, the best part was the TurtleBot activity, which involved guiding a robot through a maze using AI. To accomplish this task, the students designed their own stickers and used Google Teachable Machine to train an image classification model to recognize them. By applying this trained model and precoded rules that link each sticker to a specific movement, the students were able to guide a TurtleBot through the maze by placing the stickers along the path.
“The TurtleBot had a camera on the end that was connected to an image classification model,” Walker explained. “So, we put stickers down and trained the model to recognize the images on those stickers. One image could mean move 10 inches forward. Another could mean turn right or left–all the directions we needed to get our TurtleBot through the maze.”
Not only was the activity a fun way to illustrate image classification, it also gave students a chance to exercise problem-solving skills.
“I really like how it brought our team together. Problem solving and using our time effectively was a huge part of it,” Walker said. “The camp activities definitely opened my eyes to the different ways AI can be used.”
The TurtleBot activity was Jaya Herman’s favorite as well. A 10th grade student at West Point High School, Herman also enjoyed the balloon pop game, which was built by MSU researchers using machine learning techniques.
“The balloon pop was really fun to do but also fun to analyze,” Herman said. “After we played the game that the project team built, we got to make our own. We looked up our own balloon images, fed them to the model, and then got to play them in class and see how well they worked.
“It was kind of funny because all of us had the same issue. It wasn’t perfect, but we got to try it out for ourselves and fix things,” Herman recalled.
While the camp provided plenty of hands-on learning activities, it also gave students opportunities to present. Herman, for instance, gave nine presentations during the camp.
“This experience got me out of my comfort zone,” Herman said. “I don’t think I’m ever going to have a problem with presenting in class again.”
Future Impact
Susie Oglesby, a two-time MSU education alumna, and a STEM teacher and robotics coach at New Hope High School, loved the collaboration during the camp and how well the undergraduate mentors related to the students. She also noted how impressed she was that the MSU team taught the students to present, which she says is very rare.
“I can see the benefits of this project as a teacher because I know how valuable it is for students to present, to have hands-on experiences,” Oglesby said. “Some of the activities are simple enough that I can do them in my own classroom.
“The impact of this project is going to change these students’ lives because now they’ve made new friends, and they’ve met someone who is connected to the university. I wish every high school computer education class could go through a program like this,” Oglesby added.
During the academic year, the MSU undergraduate mentors will visit the school districts weekly to continue working with the cohort on increasingly complex projects, such as a smart door system and sorting machine. Their hard work will culminate in a showcase next summer.
From Sun’s perspective, the camp was a successful first step in the cohort’s AI journey. Her hope is that the students will develop a further interest in STEM fields and create their own AI solution one day.
“After this project, we hope to send these students into the trajectory of a STEM career related to AI,” Sun said. “Perhaps they will develop their own intelligent system in the future that will serve our community’s needs.”
By Bethany Shipp, Photos by Emily Grace McCall