Inspired by her then-new-found knowledge learned at last year's "Crash Course in Artificial Intelligence" put on by Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, Sabrina Shaner would go on to teach an elective course on AI at City Charter High School in downtown Pittsburgh.
And by her account, it ended up being a significant success.
Designed to be interactive with a heavy emphasis on student input throughout the trimester-long class, Shaner said discussions around ethics and the ethical use of AI tools proved to be one of the most dominant topics that drove student engagement. The course also covered how to analyze data and data models as well as an introduction to machine learning.
"They were engaged; a couple of kids were disappointed when they couldn't get [enrolled into the class] so a couple of students who were free during that period came in to certain lessons," Shaner said. "That was quite fun and interesting. You don't see that too often in high school."
Due to the success of her class, Shaner was one of several teachers invited back to this year's crash course to offer educators a direct look at how AI can be used in classrooms by students and teachers alike.
"As a computer science teacher, [AI] is up and coming and it's sort of like the direction that computer science is going," Maria Diaz, a teacher at North Catholic High School in Cranberry Township, said. "Now I have the experience of implementing it with the students and so now new questions come up and new ideas and new expectations. That's why I came back for a second year to hopefully fill in those gaps that came about from actually having implemented with students."
Over 40 teachers have signed up to attend the week-long series of presentations, workshops and lessons this year as part of the free event for educators, some of whom helm from Oklahoma and even Mexico. Recruiting those to attend from rural areas of Pennsylvania also proved important for this year's iteration, which had about two dozen educators attend last year's version.
"AI is just this thing this year that's been in the news sort of hanging over everybody," Stephanie Rosenthal, who hosted this year's event alongside fellow CMU School of Computer Science assistant teaching professor peer Pat Virtue, said. "I think the teachers really like collaborating with each other a lot, too … These teachers are the experts in what they do, and we can help them explore different areas and how to teach that or how to understand it. But eventually, they have to bring it back and make it real in their classroom. And so that's how I envision bringing this back to them."
Rosenthal said that educators who teach about computers, math and science made up a significant presence in the overall population of attendees this year just like last year, but she noted there was an increase in the number of attendees of those who teach English, literature and art as well.
"Fundamentally, we're doing this for them so they can take things back to their own classrooms, so they can train a set of students who are interested in coming to places like CMU and really making a difference in how these things work and what the next big thing is," Rosenthal said.
Funding contributions for this year's crash course came from Comcast Corp., the Grable Foundation, CMU's Block Center, the Bosch Group and the Build Back Better grant awarded to the region last fall.
