U. Chicago research lab gets $500k grant to scale AI-powered early learning

A research lab at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy has received a $500,000 grant from the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to develop a suite of AI-powered tools designed to improve educational outcomes for young children.

The Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab, which announced receiving the funding last week, will use the federal funds to develop the Chat2Learn Suite, “an AI-powered tool that can generate countless novel conversation prompts with illustrations that are tailored to children’s varied interests,” according to the Institute of Education Sciences’ website.

The project includes two studies targeting preschool and kindergarten students. The first includes “mini experiments” with students and their teachers, intended to “test design elements that minimize teacher attention to digital devices and optimize engagement with students.” The second study involves an eight-week pilot project in which Learn2Study is tested in six classrooms.

“The team will track program usage data on the back end of the Suite, namely the number and quality of exchanges between teachers/parents and students and between teachers and parents,” according to the project’s description.

Ariel Kalil, a public policy professor and co-director of the BIP Lab, said in a press release that bringing this model of researching funding to education represents a “major shift.”