Today’s announcement from IES is its latest effort to identify high-reward, quick turnaround, scalable solutions to improve education outcomes for all learners and to identify AI-related opportunities and risks.
IES is pleased to announce the newest set of Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Initiative investments: four National Research and Development (R&D) Centers focusing on Using Generative Artificial Intelligence to Augment Teaching and Learning in Classrooms (U-GAIN). These four new R&D Centers address the ATS Initiative’s objective to identify high-reward, quick turnaround, scalable solutions to improve education outcomes for all learners and eliminate persistent achievement and attainment gaps. Alongside the previously funded AI Institute for Exceptional Education and the AI Institute for Inclusive and Intelligent Technologies for Education, which were co-funded by IES and the National Science Foundation, these Centers are part of a broader IES effort IES to identify opportunities for AI to improve teaching and learning.
The central purpose of these U-GAIN R&D Centers is to conduct research and provide national leadership on how the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can make meaningful contributions to improve education processes and outcomes. While GenAI brings many new opportunities to reshape the work of educators with tools to augment teacher practice and to support student learning, it also poses new challenges and risks—including equity, privacy, and security concerns—particularly around its use with young learners and among learners from historically marginalized populations. These Centers will demonstrate how to integrate responsible AI practices throughout the research and development process, particularly in the education context. “Most importantly,” said Acting IES Director Matthew Soldner, “these new centers will design and scale GenAI tools that support student learning while enabling well-trained educators to do what they do best: ensuring every learner reaches their fullest potential.”
Each U-GAIN R&D Center will make a unique contribution to this important and timely topic, with two Centers focusing on the use of GenAI to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and two Centers focusing on improving literacy outcomes. The four U-GAIN R&D Centers are also interdisciplinary collaborations among universities, non-profits, and the technology industry, alongside partnerships with educators and local and state education agencies (see R&D Center state map for the locations of where the research institutions and data collection sites are located).
The four U-GAIN Centers include:
National Center on Generative AI for Uplifting STEM+C Education (GENIUS Center) (R305C240010)
This Center aims to transform education through the development of a GenAI learning agent, GenAgent, to address the need for robust interdisciplinary science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computing (STEM+C) education for middle school students. GenAgent will serve as a mentor, learning buddy, collaborative learning agent, and teacher assistant to promote six key middle school science and engineering practices. Participating teachers and their students will come from middle schools in five states: Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, Tennessee, and California.
AmplifyGAIN: Generative AI for Transformative Learning (R305C240012)
This Center focuses on the use of GenAI to enhance mathematics and science teaching and learning in K-12 schools. They will conduct exploratory studies and longitudinal, nationwide surveys of teachers to discover use scenarios and refine theories of change about how GenAI tools can transform math and science teaching and learning. This will inform the development and implementation of Colleague AI—an AI-enhanced assistant—to empower teachers to compose rigorous, engaging, and inclusive lesson materials, conduct formative classroom assessments, and automatically score and generate diagnostic reports to personalize student feedback. Research on Colleague AI will be conducted primarily in Washington state school districts.
The Using Generative AI for Reading R&D Center (U-GAIN Reading) (R305C240040)
This Center will investigate how to integrate GenAI, aligned to scientific evidence about reading, to achieve strong, equitable gains for diverse elementary school students, with a specific focus on English learners (ELs). This research will generate (a) new knowledge about how to use generative AI to create content that matches each student’s interests and strengths, enable dialogues about the meaning of content, and adapt to a student’s progress and needs; (b) evidence about the benefits to ELs and all students of implementing this knowledge in a scalable reading platform; and (c) national leadership on how to support and sustain active reading among ELs in an age of AI. Research will take place in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Texas.
Center for Early Literacy and Responsible AI (CELaRAI): Innovating Beginning Reading Instruction for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners (R305C240046)
This Center will explore how to harness the transformative power of GenAI to innovate K-2 beginning reading materials and support for independent reading. CELaRAI will focus on research and development of AI Reading Enhancer (AIRE), a student-facing tool to generate personalized text (AIRE Text Generator), conduct real-time reading analysis (AIRE Reading Analysis), and provide just-in-time literacy support (AIRE Text Enhancer). This project will take place in urban and suburban public elementary schools in New York, Michigan, and North Carolina that serve culturally and linguistically diverse students from low- to mid-socioeconomic-status families.
These four U-GAIN R&D Centers were awarded as cooperative agreements with IES to ensure that the research and national leadership provided on GenAI and education is centered around evidence and responsible uses of AI. IES is looking forward to working with the new Centers to advance education research, policy, and practice in this rapidly evolving space.
State Map of U-GAIN R&D Center Institutions and Research Site Locations
This blog was produced by Christina Chhin (christina.chhin@ed.gov) and Erin Higgins (erin.higgins@ed.gov), Program Officers in the National Center for Education Research.