Creation and Evaluation of a Pre-tertiary Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  Curriculum
  Contributions: The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)-Jockey Club AI for
the Future Project (AI4Future) co-created an AI curriculum for pre-tertiary
education and evaluated its efficacy. While AI is conventionally taught in
tertiary level education, our co-creation process successfully developed the
curriculum that has been used in secondary school teaching in Hong Kong and
received positive feedback. Background: AI4Future is a cross-sector project
that engages five major partners - CUHK Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of
Education, Hong Kong secondary schools, the government and the AI industry. A
team of 14 professors with expertise in engineering and education collaborated
with 17 principals and teachers from 6 secondary schools to co-create the
curriculum. This team formation bridges the gap between researchers in
engineering and education, together with practitioners in education context.
Research Questions: What are the main features of the curriculum content
developed through the co-creation process? Would the curriculum significantly
improve the students perceived competence in, as well as attitude and
motivation towards AI? What are the teachers perceptions of the co-creation
process that aims to accommodate and foster teacher autonomy? Methodology: This
study adopted a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods and involved 335
student participants. Findings: 1) two main features of learning resources, 2)
the students perceived greater competence, and developed more positive attitude
to learn AI, and 3) the co-creation process generated a variety of resources
which enhanced the teachers knowledge in AI, as well as fostered teachers
autonomy in bringing the subject matter into their classrooms.
