The centers are like test kitchens – not for food recipes, but for reimagining the art of teaching.
Here, educators experiment with new methods, refine old techniques, and explore the transformational potential of the main ingredient: Generative AI (GenAI).
The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has opened four National Research and Development Centers focused on developing new teaching methods by applying Generative AI, called Using Generative Artificial Intelligence to Augment Teaching and Learning in Classrooms (U-GAIN).
The centers opened on September 1, 2024, each one funded with a five-year, $10 million federal grant, a total of $40 million for all four. The grants expire in August, 2029.
While each center is taking a specific role in their research, they will be sharing ideas throughout the process, according to Elizabeth Albro, the commissioner of the National Center for Educational Research, based in Washington, D.C.
“We are also working to build a community across the four centers themselves, facilitating conversation amongst the centers, so as people are learning. This is such a quick -moving field right now, we really want to make sure that if someone is learning something that is super-interesting and innovative, that there are opportunities for the other teams to pick up that work,” Commissioner Albro said in an interview with Techstrong.
While there are many potential applications to enhance teaching, IES says it is proceeding with the awareness that AI poses new challenges and risks, including equity, privacy, and security concerns, “particularly around its use with young learners and among learners from historically marginalized populations.”
“The central purpose of these U-GAIN R&D Centers is to conduct research and provide national leadership on how the use of generative artificial intelligence can make meaningful contributions to improve education processes and outcomes.”
Two of the centers have a science, technology, engineering, and math focus, and two focus on literacy. They partner with universities, non-profits, the tech industry, educators and local and state education agencies.
The four centers are the GENIUS Center (National Center on Generative AI for Uplifting STEM+C Education), the AmplifyGAIN Center (Generative AI for Transformative Learning), the U-GAIN Reading Center (The Using Generative AI for Reading R&D Center), and the CELaRAI Center (the Center for Early Literacy and Responsible AI).
Acting IES Director Matthew Soldner said, “Most importantly, these new centers will design and scale GenAI tools that support student learning while enabling well-trained educators to do what they do best: ensuring every learner reaches their fullest potential.”
The GENIUS Center includes teachers and students from five states, including Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, Tennessee, and California, to help transform STEM learning through Generative AI.
“The GENIUS Center will produce a suite of open-sourced multimodal disciplinary LLMs trained on contextual resources (classroom data), tools, student learning resources, professional learning materials, empirical research findings on the potential efficacy of GenAgent in education, policy briefs, webinars, and best practices for its ethical and responsible use.”
The center will include data from approximately 175 middle school science teachers and their 15,000 students.
AmplifyGAIN draws from Washington state school districts, and will focus on the development and implementation of “Colleague AI”, an AI-enhanced assistant for teachers, that will produce lesson materials, conduct classroom assessments, and personalize student feedback. The Center will collect data from approximately 4,500 teachers.
“The Center will recruit teachers for the pilot study from school districts that serve students with diverse needs in language, cultural, special education accommodations, academic mastery levels, and from urban, suburban, small town, and rural communities.”
“The AmplifyGAIN Center will: (1) conduct exploratory studies to examine how GenAI is currently used in classrooms to improve teaching and learning outcomes, (2) informed by the exploratory studies, AmplifyGAIN will develop, test, and revise “Colleague AI” — a GenAI assistant for teachers to prepare rigorous, engaging, and inclusive math and science lesson materials, conduct formative classroom assessments, and automatically score and generate diagnostic reports to personalize student feedback; and (3) conduct a pilot study to assess the promise of Colleague AI for improving learners’ math and science education outcomes. In addition, AmplifyGAIN will provide national leadership and outreach activities on the responsible use of GenAI to improve learner outcomes.”
The U-Gain Reading center will conduct research in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Texas, and will focus on helping English learning elementary school students achieve strong gains.
That research will include data from over 10,000 elementary school students. “U-GAIN Reading will ask two overarching research questions: (1) How can generative AI improve reading performance for ELs and all students who are not yet reading connected text? (2) How can generative AI improve proficient reading with comprehension for ELs and all students who are ready for a greater focus on comprehension?”
The CELaRAI Center will include schools in New York, Michigan, and North Carolina, focusing on “culturally and linguistically diverse” children from mid to low socioeconomic status. That center will focus on Research and Development of AIRE (AI Reading Enhancer). AIRE would be a tool for students, generating personalized text, conducting reading analysis, and providing literacy and support. The center will include data from 551 teachers and 54 students in grades K-2 during the exploratory phase, and also as many as 15 teachers and 100 students in the tool design phase. The pilot study will include 48 teachers and 720 students.
“When AIRE is fully developed, the research team will engage in a pilot study to test the effectiveness of AIRE for improving K–2 students’ literacy outcomes, as well as AIRE usability, feasibility, and fidelity to drive the iterative improvement of AIRE. Across all years of the project, the research team will examine challenges in responsible AI in schools and develop ethical guidelines for AI development and deployment.”
Commissioner Albro said the ultimate goal is to tap into AI to help teachers craft tailored learning plans for all students, and “to help teachers make the best use of their time.”
