Introducing Reinforcement Learning Concepts to Middle School Students with Game-Based Learning
Pages 1587 - 1588
Abstract
As AI tools become increasingly integrated into everyday life, there is a need to expand resources for K-12 AI education. In this work, we introduce a game-based learning activity focusing on teaching reinforcement learning concepts to middle school students. We present the iterative design of the activity, discussing its initial implementation and subsequent enhancements to improve student learning outcomes. The game-based learning activity was implemented during two summer camps with middle school students. We provide an overview of the two different versions of the activity and analyze key insights drawn from student feedback, collected through pre and post-activity surveys.
References
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Griffin Dietz, Jennifer King Chen, Jazbo Beason, Matthew Tarrow, Adriana Hilliard, and R. Benjamin Shapiro. 2022. ARtonomous: Introducing Middle School Students to Reinforcement Learning Through Virtual Robotics. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 430--441. https://doi.org/10.1145/3501712.3529736
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Irene Lee, Safinah Ali, Helen Zhang, Daniella DiPaola, and Cynthia Breazeal. 2021. Developing Middle School Students' AI Literacy. In Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. ACM, 191--197.
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Alpay Sabuncuoglu. 2020. Designing One Year Curriculum to Teach Artificial Intelligence for Middle School. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education. ACM, 96--102.
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David Touretzky, Christina Gardner-McCune, Bryan Cox, Judith Uchidiuno, Janet Kolodner, and Patriel Stapleton. 2022. Lessons Learned From Teaching Artificial Intelligence to Middle School Students. In Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Vol. 2. 1371--1371.
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Ziyi Zhang, Sara Willner-Giwerc, Jivko Sinapov, Jennifer Cross, and Chris Rogers. 2022. An Interactive Robot Platform for Introducing Reinforcement Learning to K-12 Students. In Robotics in Education. RiE 2021. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, M. Merdan, W. Lepuschitz, G. Koppensteiner, R. Balogh, and D. Obdržálek (Eds.). Vol. 1359. Springer, Cham, 1--10. https://doi.org/10.1007/978- 3-030--82544--7_27
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- Introducing Reinforcement Learning Concepts to Middle School Students with Game-Based Learning
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Published In
February 2025
493 pages
ISBN:9798400705328
DOI:10.1145/3641555
- General Chairs:
- Jeffrey A. Stone,
- Timothy Yuen,
- Program Chairs:
- Libby Shoop,
- Samuel A. Rebelsky,
- James Prather
Copyright © 2025 Owner/Author.
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Association for Computing Machinery
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Published: 18 February 2025
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SIGCSE TS 2025
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SIGCSE TS 2025: The 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
February 26 - March 1, 2025
PA, Pittsburgh, USA
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