NSF FF: Planning: Hands-on and on-screen AI literacy for middle-school learners

Award ID: 2627526

This FINDERS Foundry award supports the co-design of a concept-first AI-literacy package for grades 68, built around image classification. Students treat AI as a magical black box, and the prerequisites for moving past surface-level use are steep. This is compounded by the lack of adults AI literacy to reinforce deeper learning. The project expands mechanism-level AI understanding for middle-school learners and the non-CS-trained adults around them through a comprehensive wireframe set that includes lesson-flow diagrams, simulator screen designs, and adult-companion explainers. Outcomes include giving students early exposure to how AI works and strengthening STEM education for a digital, AI-driven future. This FINDERS Foundry award fosters a fundamental mechanism level understanding of AI for all learners and learning communities. The proposed solution is a co-designed wireframe set including lesson-flow diagrams, simulator screen designs, and adult-companion explainers, for a concept-first AI-literacy package for grades 68. The package integrates three components: physical-first, off-screen activities that establish how a model learns from data before any device is opened; a paired browser-based simulator that reveals the same mechanism on real images, including how it fails; and a plain-language explainer for each lesson for an adult so parents and teachers can follow it too. The wireframe separates surface AI fluency from genuine understanding of what a model is doing to reinforce AI literacy and learning. 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: Lindsay Portnoy