How to Train Your Robot: Project-Based AI and Ethics Education for Middle School Classrooms

We developed the How to Train Your Robot curriculum to empower middle school students to become conscientious users and creators of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As AI becomes more embedded in our daily lives, all members of society should have the opportunity to become AI literate. Today, most deployed work in K-12 AI education takes place at strong STEM schools or during extracurricular clubs. But, to promote equity in the field of AI, we must also design curricula for classroom use at schools with limited resources. How to Train Your Robot leverages a low-cost ($40) robot, a block-based programming platform, novice-friendly model creation tools, and hands-on activities to introduce students to machine learning. During the summer of 2020, we trained in-service teachers, primarily from Title 1 public schools, to deliver a five-day, online version of the curriculum to their students. In this work, we describe how students' self-directed final projects demonstrate their understanding of technical and ethical AI concepts. Students successfully selected project ideas, taking the strengths and weaknesses of machine learning into account, and implemented an array of projects about everything from entertainment to science. We saw that students had the most difficulty designing mechanisms to respond to user feedback after deployment. We hope this work inspires future AI curricula that can be used in middle school classrooms.