Conference:Preparing High School Students for AI-Transformed Service Careers Through Hands-On Robotics and Entrepreneurship

Award ID: 2611147

As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes industries, a pressing challenge is how to effectively prepare K-12 students for the future of work while nurturing human values and critical thinking. Despite AI's growing role in service sectors such as hospitality and healthcare, evidence-based models for teaching AI and robotics to high school students remain limited, particularly approaches integrating technical skills with entrepreneurship and ethical reasoning. This project addresses these gaps by piloting a five-day summer summit where Central Florida high school students explore AI, robotics, and Industry 5.0 Principles, emphasizing human-centered, sustainable technology integration. Participants will examine how AI enhances problem-solving and creativity while critically analyzing issues of ethics, privacy, and fairness. Working in teams, students will design mock business proposals and technical prototypes that respond to real-world societal challenges. This project serves the national interest by advancing AI skill training and strengthening the nations capacity to develop a human-centered AI workforce. By engaging students from service-industry communities, it expands access to advanced technology learning and enhances workforce readiness in sectors vital to the US economy. Public benefits include the creation of open-access instructional materials, professional learning resources for educators, and scalable models for integrating AI education into informal STEM learning environments, thereby extending the projects impact beyond the pilot cohort. This project integrates expert-led instruction, hands-on labs, and team-based entrepreneurial challenges. Students will (1) learn core concepts in agentic AI, robotics, and human-AI collaboration; (2) engage in hands-on coding and prototyping using platforms ranging from block-based tools to Python and robot operating systems; and (3) apply these skills to design AI-enabled service solutions with entrepreneurial thinking. The curriculum employs a four-pillar AI competency framework including awareness, interaction, application, and human-AI co-creation, structured across a three-level learning model addressing individual, team, and societal contexts. The project will generate empirical evidence on how high school students develop technical understanding, self-efficacy, and ethical awareness when engaged in human-centered artificial intelligence and robotics learning experiences. By systematically linking instructional design, project-based learning, and evaluation outcomes, this initiative will contribute actionable insights into effective pedagogical approaches for cultivating applied AI competencies and entrepreneurship. These findings will inform future curriculum design and support evidence-based integration of AI, robotics, ethics, and entrepreneurship into K-12 education nationwide. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Sharon Bird