For years, there’s been a push to create better broadband infrastructure in rural areas, where access to high speed internet can be hard to come by.
Now, Wright State University is tackling a new digital frontier: artificial intelligence.
The university received $2.5 million in grant money from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education to develop an AI curriculum for rural educators at Ohio and Kansas high schools and colleges.
Project lead Cogan Shimizu said the hope is to improve AI literacy in areas with fewer resources.
“The focus is really on understanding how these AI tools work, how they can impact your life,” he said. “Even if you will never touch one of these AI tools, other people may be, other systems may be, other government processes, other companies, all of these people are using these different varieties of AI systems to make decisions that are going to impact people's lives.”
Bolstering AI literacy
Artificial intelligence is permeating classrooms. Regardless of whether they’re situated in urban metropolises or remote rural schools, Shimizu said teachers and students need to be prepared to use the tool ethically.
Wright State’s funding allows them to develop a curriculum around best practices and basic fundamentals. They will develop curriculums to be used by rural schools, rural educators and post-secondary educators.
“So taking a look at the training that teachers are receiving in order to understand how AI is going to impact them and their classroom. But, in addition, actually teaching these AI concepts to students,” he said.
At the end of the four-year project, the University of Florida will develop metrics to assess the curriculum’s efficacy.
The need for a rural playbook
Rural areas already often have fewer tools and technologies at their disposal. As artificial intelligence expands across industries, Shimizu said it’s important that steps are taken to ensure rural students aren’t left behind.
“Rural communities deserve specific attention because their obstacles are different. Different sorts of needs, different sorts of communities, different sort of ways of life,” he said. “The way that AI is going to impact them is distinctly and observably and significantly different than how it might affect communities in denser areas.”
The university is partnering with Kansas State Extension to complete the project. Shimizu said they are trying to reach as many schools as possible in both Ohio and Kansas.
Shimizu said he doesn’t want the project to be top-down. He hopes to collaborate with rural communities to assess, and meet, their greatest needs.
“We're not trying to come in and say, ‘No, this is how you should use AI,’” he said. “Let's make sure that we're not growing any divides or instituting any obstacles between our communities and the universities and other centers of education.”
