AiBuddy: Helping Students Never Stop Learning

Phillip Tran, Nicoletta Gilbertson, Ray Fung, Alex McGregor

Problem and Solution Overview:

With the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 in the United States, the transition to online schooling for students has been universal; from K-12 as well as higher education, Zoom has become the de facto standard for educators alike. However, Zoom is not an all encompassing solution. Many younger students, especially primary school children, have been struggling to stay focused in class and manage their workload. These students are at a distinct disadvantage compared to their older counterparts. What some older students may consider trivial tasks can be extremely difficult if not impossible for elementary students; tasks such as cooking lunch, maintaining due dates, and staying focused and motivated during class. Our solution, AiBuddy aims at tackling these deficiencies of the online learning environment by providing students with an AI Companion that assists students with keeping track of their school responsibilities and presenting tangible rewards as a means to motivate and keep students engaged.

Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants:

During our research we are hoping to narrow down the common problems students face through online learning and hopefully provide enough support for students to stay on track in school. We are targeting elementary school students in the Seattle area in our project, since younger students have had less time to practice being a student and developing studying skills. Other possible stakeholders include teachers and parents, as they are directly tied to students in the teaching process and keeping children on track during and out of class. We decided to collect data from teachers to figure out what we could do to help primary students. We wanted to know what specifically is a hindrance to teachers in keeping students focused today, both because of COVID and general trends over the last few years. If they had advice on which resources would benefit them and that they wished they had access to, that would also be great. To do this, we sent out surveys to teachers around the area asking a series of questions regarding students and the impact COVID has had on them in their classroom. Although we didn’t get as many results as we would have liked, we were still able to draw meaningful conclusions from the data (And we were careful to not overfit to our responses since the sample size wasn’t large enough to draw sweeping generalizations).

Design Research Results and Themes:

During our research phase of the project, we made some very useful discoveries that benefited our eventual design choices. The biggest discovery we made was one surrounding our initial target group, which was elementary school teachers rather than the student group we ended up on, and due to the feedback we received from surveys we pivoted the target group entirely. This was probably the single biggest change we have made along the way of our project so far, as it required reframing all the issues the group was facing and reconsidering the best ways to reach the target group. We made the switch from teachers to students for many reasons. Our survey was sent out to teachers at first and a sample of responses were the following: “Harder to reach students virtually and give them the support they need,” and “Everything being online alters what materials are available to students. We have to plan for activities that require minimal materials.” Another particularly detailed response to the question — how has COVID impacted how you teach — “It has impacted every part of how I teach. My connection with students and parents is lacking, I struggle with providing quality instruction when students can’t effectively communicate with each other during lesson (turn and talk), the varying levels of support students have at home affects what they accomplish, keeping lessons short enough to actually teach content while holding their attention. I could go on and on.” After our survey we noticed the trend that teachers really only wanted students to be able to get the support that they needed, particularly among younger students. So, we pivoted the project to design for the student to student disparity, and we feel that we would be able to make a much bigger dent in the overall issues surrounding education with these changes.

Another interesting tidbit of information that we gained after our initial surveys was that some of our ideas for the project were already in motion at various levels. One of our quick mock-up ideas was to have a marketplace for teachers to easily trade materials that they didn’t use during the school year. However, when we asked what teachers did with their extra materials if they didn’t need them, many of them said that they already would give them to other classes that needed them! This was something that we did not realize was happening, and was another catalyst in our changing of target groups. It was also pretty cool to see, even if it was at a smaller scale, that teachers are cognizant of waste and are willing to help each other out.

Proposed Design:

Our research findings from elementary school teachers have prompted us to create something that is an incentive and aid for elementary students to pay more attention in class and get help staying on top of their work and needs. We have brainstormed AiBuddy, an AI that assists a student with maintaining their deadlines as well as providing a system that rewards students for staying on track and engaged in their learning.

The AI can remind students about due dates and when they might consider starting an assignment. It may also be used to help provide support to students for other things, like nutrition advice and studying tactics. These tasks which seem easy for teens and older students actually provide a significant hurdle to younger students. Additionally, to motivate students, the AiBuddy can be personally customized by students with rewards that are given out by system. These rewards can be given for completing homework on time, staying on task during class, and helping out other classmates. These rewards give younger students more reason to stay on track beyond learning by giving them a tangible reward.

The first storyboard shows off the reminders and context-driven help that the AiBuddy can give the student, anything from setting an alarm to helping the student read a book for their homework. Additionally, it will hopefully take the place of a parent in some of the easier to answer questions that come up during the day, where a parent might be stuck working and not able to help their child.

This second drawing represents another of the main issues that our AiBuddy hopes to tackle. In this storyboard, the student is rewarded with new clothes for their AiBuddy for answering a question. Then the student is able to compare their AiBuddy’s appearance to other classmates! We’re hoping that by providing tangible rewards for students who are focused and providing an AiBuddy that students may interact with, they will find more motivation to stay focused in class.