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AIED Unplugged: Leapfrogging the Digital Divide to Reach the Underserved

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Artificial Intelligence in Education. Posters and Late Breaking Results, Workshops and Tutorials, Industry and Innovation Tracks, Practitioners, Doctoral Consortium and Blue Sky (AIED 2023)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1831))

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Abstract

Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) is a driving force to improve education. Nevertheless, policymakers from the Global South fear that AI will increase the digital divide and reduce the opportunities for students in these regions to thrive. To address this problem, we analyzed the past 30 years of data on four aspects of the digital divide. Then, based on these findings and a series of discussions with stakeholders (e.g., policymakers), we proposed the concept of AIED Unplugged. An approach to creating AI-based educational technologies that do not require changes in current school settings (e.g., infrastructure), do not rely on stable internet access, and do not ask for digital skills to use them. We applied this concept to redesign an education policy in Brazil to help students improve their writing skills. Our results show a reduction in time, cost and complexity to running the policy, and a positive impact on more than 500,000 students in 7,000 schools in the country.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://data.worldbank.org/.

  2. 2.

    https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/icils/.

  3. 3.

    This dataset will be released freely to the public in 2023–2024.

  4. 4.

    http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2022/decreto/D11079.htm.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to express our gratitude to all participants in this national project, including researchers, policymakers, teachers, educators and students. This work was supported by the Brazilian Ministry of Education.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Seiji Isotani & Ig Ibert Bittencourt

  2. NEES: Center for Excellence in Social Technologies, Federal University of Alagoas, Maceio, AL, 57072-970, Brazil

    Seiji Isotani, Ig Ibert Bittencourt, Geiser C. Challco, Diego Dermeval & Rafael F. Mello

  3. Federal Rural University of the Semi-arid Region, Pau dos Ferros, RN, 59900, Brazil

    Geiser C. Challco

  4. Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Recife, PE, 52171-900, Brazil

    Rafael F. Mello

Authors
  1. Seiji Isotani
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  2. Ig Ibert Bittencourt
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  3. Geiser C. Challco
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  4. Diego Dermeval
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  5. Rafael F. Mello
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Seiji Isotani .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Ning Wang

  2. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Genaro Rebolledo-Mendez

  3. University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Vania Dimitrova

  4. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Noboru Matsuda

  5. UNED, Madrid, Spain

    Olga C. Santos

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Isotani, S., Bittencourt, I.I., Challco, G.C., Dermeval, D., Mello, R.F. (2023). AIED Unplugged: Leapfrogging the Digital Divide to Reach the Underserved. In: Wang, N., Rebolledo-Mendez, G., Dimitrova, V., Matsuda, N., Santos, O.C. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. Posters and Late Breaking Results, Workshops and Tutorials, Industry and Innovation Tracks, Practitioners, Doctoral Consortium and Blue Sky. AIED 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1831. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36336-8_118

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36336-8_118

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-36335-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-36336-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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