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Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong potential in performing automatic scoring for constructed response assessments. While constructed responses graded by humans are usually based on given grading rubrics, the methods by which LLMs assign scores remain largely unclear. It is also uncertain how closely AI's scoring process mirrors that of humans, or if it adheres to the same grading criteria. To address this gap, this paper uncovers the grading rubrics that LLMs used to score students' written responses to science tasks and their alignment with human scores. We also examine whether enhancing the alignments can improve scoring accuracy. Specifically, we prompt LLMs to generate analytic rubrics that they use to assign scores and study the alignment gap with human grading rubrics. Based on a series of experiments with various configurations of LLM settings, we reveal a notable alignment gap between human and LLM graders. While LLMs can adapt quickly to scoring tasks, they often resort to shortcuts, bypassing deeper logical reasoning expected in human grading. We found that incorporating high-quality analytical rubrics designed to reflect human grading logic can mitigate this gap and enhance LLMs' scoring accuracy. These results caution against the simplistic application of LLMs in science education and highlight the importance of aligning LLM outputs with human expectations to ensure efficient and accurate automatic scoring., Comment: Non-archival Presenting at EDM 2024 Workshop on Large Language Models

As artificial intelligence (AI) receives wider attention in education, examining teachers' acceptance of AI (TAAI) becomes essential. However, existing instruments measuring TAAI reported limited reliability and validity evidence and faced some design challenges, such as missing informed definitions of AI to participants. This study aimed to develop and validate a TAAI instrument, with providing sufficient evidence for high psychometric quality. Based on the literature, we first identified five dimensions of TAAI, including perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, behavioral intention, self-efficacy, and anxiety, and then developed items to assess each dimension. We examined the face and content validity using expert review and think-aloud with pre-service teachers. Using the revised instrument, we collected responses from 274 pre-service teachers and examined the item discriminations to identify outlier items. We employed the confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha to examine the construct validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. Results confirmed the dimensionality of the scale, resulting in 27 items distributed in five dimensions. The study exhibits robust validity and reliability evidence for TAAI, thus affirming its usefulness as a valid measurement instrument.

To uncover pre-service teachers' (PSTs') user experience and perceptions of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) applications, we surveyed 167 Ghana PSTs' specific uses of GenAI as a learning buddy and teaching assistant, and their attitudes towards these applications. Employing exploratory factor analysis (EFA), we identified three key factors shaping PSTs' attitudes towards GenAI: teaching, learning, and ethical and advocacy factors. The mean scores of these factors revealed a generally positive attitude towards GenAI, indicating high levels of agreement on its potential to enhance PSTs' content knowledge and access to learning and teaching resources, thereby reducing their need for assistance from colleagues. Specifically, PSTs use GenAI as a learning buddy to access reading materials, in-depth content explanations, and practical examples, and as a teaching assistant to enhance teaching resources, develop assessment strategies, and plan lessons. A regression analysis showed that background factors such as age, gender, and year of study do not predict PSTs' attitudes towards GenAI, but age and year of study significantly predict the frequency of their use of GenAI, while gender does not. These findings suggest that older PSTs and those further along in their teacher education programs may use GenAI more frequently, but their perceptions of the application remain unchanged. However, PSTs expressed concerns about the accuracy and trustworthiness of the information provided by GenAI applications. We, therefore, suggest addressing these concerns to ensure PSTs can confidently rely on these applications in their teacher preparation programs. Additionally, we recommend targeted strategies to integrate GenAI more effectively into both learning and teaching processes for PSTs.

Educational scholars have analyzed various image data acquired from teaching and learning situations, such as photos that shows classroom dynamics, students' drawings with regard to the learning content, textbook illustrations, etc. Unquestioningly, most qualitative analysis of and explanation on image data have been conducted by human researchers, without machine-based automation. It was partially because most image processing artificial intelligence models were not accessible to general educational scholars or explainable due to their complex deep neural network architecture. However, the recent development of Visual Question Answering (VQA) techniques is accomplishing usable visual language models, which receive from the user a question about the given image and returns an answer, both in natural language. Particularly, GPT-4V released by OpenAI, has wide opened the state-of-the-art visual langauge model service so that VQA could be used for a variety of purposes. However, VQA and GPT-4V have not yet been applied to educational studies much. In this position paper, we suggest that GPT-4V contributes to realizing VQA for education. By 'realizing' VQA, we denote two meanings: (1) GPT-4V realizes the utilization of VQA techniques by any educational scholars without technical/accessibility barrier, and (2) GPT-4V makes educational scholars realize the usefulness of VQA to educational research. Given these, this paper aims to introduce VQA for educational studies so that it provides a milestone for educational research methodology. In this paper, chapter II reviews the development of VQA techniques, which primes with the release of GPT-4V. Chapter III reviews the use of image analysis in educational studies. Chapter IV demonstrates how GPT-4V can be used for each research usage reviewed in Chapter III, with operating prompts provided. Finally, chapter V discusses the future implications.

This chapter focuses on the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in science assessments. The paper begins with a discussion of the Framework for K-12 Science Education, which calls for a shift from conceptual learning to knowledge-in-use. This shift necessitates the development of new types of assessments that align with the Framework's three dimensions: science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. The paper further highlights the limitations of traditional assessment methods like multiple-choice questions, which often fail to capture the complexities of scientific thinking and three-dimensional learning in science. It emphasizes the need for performance-based assessments that require students to engage in scientific practices like modeling, explanation, and argumentation. The paper achieves three major goals: reviewing the current state of ML-based assessments in science education, introducing a framework for scoring accuracy in ML-based automatic assessments, and discussing future directions and challenges. It delves into the evolution of ML-based automatic scoring systems, discussing various types of ML, like supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised learning. These systems can provide timely and objective feedback, thus alleviating the burden on teachers. The paper concludes by exploring pre-trained models like BERT and finetuned ChatGPT, which have shown promise in assessing students' written responses effectively., Comment: 18 pages, book chapter, in the book: Jiao, H., & Lissitz, R. W. (Eds.). Machine learning, natural language processing and psychometrics. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publisher

Robot systems in education can leverage Large language models' (LLMs) natural language understanding capabilities to provide assistance and facilitate learning. This paper proposes a multimodal interactive robot (PhysicsAssistant) built on YOLOv8 object detection, cameras, speech recognition, and chatbot using LLM to provide assistance to students' physics labs. We conduct a user study on ten 8th-grade students to empirically evaluate the performance of PhysicsAssistant with a human expert. The Expert rates the assistants' responses to student queries on a 0-4 scale based on Bloom's taxonomy to provide educational support. We have compared the performance of PhysicsAssistant (YOLOv8+GPT-3.5-turbo) with GPT-4 and found that the human expert rating of both systems for factual understanding is the same. However, the rating of GPT-4 for conceptual and procedural knowledge (3 and 3.2 vs 2.2 and 2.6, respectively) is significantly higher than PhysicsAssistant (p < 0.05). However, the response time of GPT-4 is significantly higher than PhysicsAssistant (3.54 vs 1.64 sec, p < 0.05). Hence, despite the relatively lower response quality of PhysicsAssistant than GPT-4, it has shown potential for being used as a real-time lab assistant to provide timely responses and can offload teachers' labor to assist with repetitive tasks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to build such an interactive multimodal robotic assistant for K-12 science (physics) education., Comment: Accepted to IEEE RO-MAN Special Session

Explainable AI (XAI) refers to techniques that provide human-understandable insights into the workings of AI models. Recently, the focus of XAI is being extended towards Large Language Models (LLMs) which are often criticized for their lack of transparency. This extension calls for a significant transformation in XAI methodologies because of two reasons. First, many existing XAI methods cannot be directly applied to LLMs due to their complexity advanced capabilities. Second, as LLMs are increasingly deployed across diverse industry applications, the role of XAI shifts from merely opening the "black box" to actively enhancing the productivity and applicability of LLMs in real-world settings. Meanwhile, unlike traditional machine learning models that are passive recipients of XAI insights, the distinct abilities of LLMs can reciprocally enhance XAI. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce Usable XAI in the context of LLMs by analyzing (1) how XAI can benefit LLMs and AI systems, and (2) how LLMs can contribute to the advancement of XAI. We introduce 10 strategies, introducing the key techniques for each and discussing their associated challenges. We also provide case studies to demonstrate how to obtain and leverage explanations. The code used in this paper can be found at: https://github.com/JacksonWuxs/UsableXAI_LLM., Comment: 38 pages, 4 figures

The advancement of natural language processing has paved the way for automated scoring systems in various languages, such as German (e.g., German BERT [G-BERT]). Automatically scoring written responses to science questions in German is a complex task and challenging for standard G-BERT as they lack contextual knowledge in the science domain and may be unaligned with student writing styles. This paper presents a contextualized German Science Education BERT (G-SciEdBERT), an innovative large language model tailored for scoring German-written responses to science tasks and beyond. Using G-BERT, we pre-trained G-SciEdBERT on a corpus of 30K German written science responses with 3M tokens on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018. We fine-tuned G-SciEdBERT on an additional 20K student-written responses with 2M tokens and examined the scoring accuracy. We then compared its scoring performance with G-BERT. Our findings revealed a substantial improvement in scoring accuracy with G-SciEdBERT, demonstrating a 10.2% increase of quadratic weighted Kappa compared to G-BERT (mean difference = 0.1026, SD = 0.069). These insights underline the significance of specialized language models like G-SciEdBERT, which is trained to enhance the accuracy of contextualized automated scoring, offering a substantial contribution to the field of AI in education., Comment: Accepted by EDM and Submitted to JEDM

Despite the buzz around ChatGPT's potential, empirical studies exploring its actual utility in the classroom for learning remain scarce. This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing the lesson plans developed by 29 pre-service elementary teachers from a Korean university and assessing how they integrated ChatGPT into science learning activities. We first examined how the subject domains and teaching and learning methods/strategies were integrated with ChatGPT in the lesson plans. We then evaluated the lesson plans using a modified TPACK-based rubric. We further examined pre-service teachers' perceptions and concerns about integrating ChatGPT into science learning. Results show diverse applications of ChatGPT in different science domains. Fourteen types of teaching and learning methods/strategies were identified in the lesson plans. On average, the pre-service teachers' lesson plans scored high on the modified TPACK-based rubric, indicating a reasonable envisage of integrating ChatGPT into science learning, particularly in 'instructional strategies & ChatGPT'. However, they scored relatively lower on exploiting ChatGPT's functions toward its full potential compared to other aspects. The study also identifies both appropriate and inappropriate use cases of ChatGPT in lesson planning. Pre-service teachers anticipated ChatGPT to afford high-quality questioning, self-directed learning, individualized learning support, and formative assessment. Meanwhile, they also expressed concerns about its accuracy and the risks that students may be overly dependent on ChatGPT. They further suggested solutions to systemizing classroom dynamics between teachers and students. The study underscores the need for more research on the roles of generative AI in actual classroom settings and provides insights for future AI-integrated science learning.

This study aimed to examine an assumption that generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools can overcome the cognitive intensity that humans suffer when solving problems. We compared the performance of ChatGPT and GPT-4 on 2019 NAEP science assessments with students by cognitive demands of the items. Fifty-four tasks were coded by experts using a two-dimensional cognitive load framework, including task cognitive complexity and dimensionality. ChatGPT and GPT-4 responses were scored using the scoring keys of NAEP. The analysis of the available data was based on the average student ability scores for students who answered each item correctly and the percentage of students who responded to individual items. Results showed that both ChatGPT and GPT-4 consistently outperformed most students who answered the NAEP science assessments. As the cognitive demand for NAEP tasks increases, statistically higher average student ability scores are required to correctly address the questions. This pattern was observed for students in grades 4, 8, and 12, respectively. However, ChatGPT and GPT-4 were not statistically sensitive to the increase in cognitive demands of the tasks, except for Grade 4. As the first study focusing on comparing GAI and K-12 students in problem-solving in science, this finding implies the need for changes to educational objectives to prepare students with competence to work with GAI tools in the future. Education ought to emphasize the cultivation of advanced cognitive skills rather than depending solely on tasks that demand cognitive intensity. This approach would foster critical thinking, analytical skills, and the application of knowledge in novel contexts. Findings also suggest the need for innovative assessment practices by moving away from cognitive intensity tasks toward creativity and analytical skills to avoid the negative effects of GAI on testing more efficiently.

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Model (LLM)-based systems, in education has shown promise in enhancing teaching and learning experiences. However, the advent of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) like GPT-4 with vision (GPT-4V), capable of processing multimodal data including text, sound, and visual inputs, opens a new era of enriched, personalized, and interactive learning landscapes in education. Grounded in theory of multimedia learning, this paper explores the transformative role of MLLMs in central aspects of science education by presenting exemplary innovative learning scenarios. Possible applications for MLLMs could range from content creation to tailored support for learning, fostering competencies in scientific practices, and providing assessment and feedback. These scenarios are not limited to text-based and uni-modal formats but can be multimodal, increasing thus personalization, accessibility, and potential learning effectiveness. Besides many opportunities, challenges such as data protection and ethical considerations become more salient, calling for robust frameworks to ensure responsible integration. This paper underscores the necessity for a balanced approach in implementing MLLMs, where the technology complements rather than supplants the educator's role, ensuring thus an effective and ethical use of AI in science education. It calls for further research to explore the nuanced implications of MLLMs on the evolving role of educators and to extend the discourse beyond science education to other disciplines. Through the exploration of potentials, challenges, and future implications, we aim to contribute to a preliminary understanding of the transformative trajectory of MLLMs in science education and beyond., Comment: revised version 2. September 2024

This study proposes a method for knowledge distillation (KD) of fine-tuned Large Language Models (LLMs) into smaller, more efficient, and accurate neural networks. We specifically target the challenge of deploying these models on resource-constrained devices. Our methodology involves training the smaller student model (Neural Network) using the prediction probabilities (as soft labels) of the LLM, which serves as a teacher model. This is achieved through a specialized loss function tailored to learn from the LLM's output probabilities, ensuring that the student model closely mimics the teacher's performance. To validate the performance of the KD approach, we utilized a large dataset, 7T, containing 6,684 student-written responses to science questions and three mathematical reasoning datasets with student-written responses graded by human experts. We compared accuracy with state-of-the-art (SOTA) distilled models, TinyBERT, and artificial neural network (ANN) models. Results have shown that the KD approach has 3% and 2% higher scoring accuracy than ANN and TinyBERT, respectively, and comparable accuracy to the teacher model. Furthermore, the student model size is 0.03M, 4,000 times smaller in parameters and x10 faster in inferencing than the teacher model and TinyBERT, respectively. The significance of this research lies in its potential to make advanced AI technologies accessible in typical educational settings, particularly for automatic scoring., Comment: Accepted to AIED2024

This research aims to demonstrate that AI can function not only as a tool for learning, but also as an intelligent agent with which humans can engage in collaborative learning (CL) to change epistemic practices in science classrooms. We adopted a design and development research approach, following the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation (ADDIE) model, to prototype a tangible instructional system called Collaborative Learning with AI Speakers (CLAIS). The CLAIS system is designed to have 3-4 human learners join an AI speaker to form a small group, where humans and AI are considered as peers participating in the Jigsaw learning process. The development was carried out using the NUGU AI speaker platform. The CLAIS system was successfully implemented in a Science Education course session with 15 pre-service elementary science teachers. The participants evaluated the CLAIS system through mixed methods surveys as teachers, learners, peers, and users. Quantitative data showed that the participants' Intelligent-Technological, Pedagogical, And Content Knowledge was significantly increased after the CLAIS session, the perception of the CLAIS learning experience was positive, the peer assessment on AI speakers and human peers was different, and the user experience was ambivalent. Qualitative data showed that the participants anticipated future changes in the epistemic process in science classrooms, while acknowledging technical issues such as speech recognition performance and response latency. This study highlights the potential of Human-AI Collaboration for knowledge co-construction in authentic classroom settings and exemplify how AI could shape the future landscape of epistemic practices in the classroom.

This study delves into the pervasive issue of gender issues in artificial intelligence (AI), specifically within automatic scoring systems for student-written responses. The primary objective is to investigate the presence of gender biases, disparities, and fairness in generally targeted training samples with mixed-gender datasets in AI scoring outcomes. Utilizing a fine-tuned version of BERT and GPT-3.5, this research analyzes more than 1000 human-graded student responses from male and female participants across six assessment items. The study employs three distinct techniques for bias analysis: Scoring accuracy difference to evaluate bias, mean score gaps by gender (MSG) to evaluate disparity, and Equalized Odds (EO) to evaluate fairness. The results indicate that scoring accuracy for mixed-trained models shows an insignificant difference from either male- or female-trained models, suggesting no significant scoring bias. Consistently with both BERT and GPT-3.5, we found that mixed-trained models generated fewer MSG and non-disparate predictions compared to humans. In contrast, compared to humans, gender-specifically trained models yielded larger MSG, indicating that unbalanced training data may create algorithmic models to enlarge gender disparities. The EO analysis suggests that mixed-trained models generated more fairness outcomes compared with gender-specifically trained models. Collectively, the findings suggest that gender-unbalanced data do not necessarily generate scoring bias but can enlarge gender disparities and reduce scoring fairness., Comment: An answer to the questions regarding AI gender bias, Submitted to Educational Technology & Society

This paper presents a comprehensive examination of how multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) approaches are paving the way towards the realization of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in educational contexts. It scrutinizes the evolution and integration of AI in educational systems, emphasizing the crucial role of multimodality, which encompasses auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and linguistic modes of learning. This research delves deeply into the key facets of AGI, including cognitive frameworks, advanced knowledge representation, adaptive learning mechanisms, strategic planning, sophisticated language processing, and the integration of diverse multimodal data sources. It critically assesses AGI's transformative potential in reshaping educational paradigms, focusing on enhancing teaching and learning effectiveness, filling gaps in existing methodologies, and addressing ethical considerations and responsible usage of AGI in educational settings. The paper also discusses the implications of multimodal AI's role in education, offering insights into future directions and challenges in AGI development. This exploration aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the intersection between AI, multimodality, and education, setting a foundation for future research and development in AGI.

This study explores the efficacy of a multi-perspective hybrid neural network (HNN) for scoring student responses in science education with an analytic rubric. We compared the accuracy of the HNN model with four ML approaches (BERT, AACR, Naive Bayes, and Logistic Regression). The results have shown that HHN achieved 8%, 3%, 1%, and 0.12% higher accuracy than Naive Bayes, Logistic Regression, AACR, and BERT, respectively, for five scoring aspects (p<0.001). The overall HNN's perceived accuracy (M = 96.23%, SD = 1.45%) is comparable to the (training and inference) expensive BERT model's accuracy (M = 96.12%, SD = 1.52%). We also have observed that HNN is x2 more efficient in training and inferencing than BERT and has comparable efficiency to the lightweight but less accurate Naive Bayes model. Our study confirmed the accuracy and efficiency of using HNN to score students' science writing automatically., Comment: Accepted to AI4ED-AAAI24

This study investigates the application of large language models (LLMs), specifically GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, with Chain-of-Though (CoT) in the automatic scoring of student-written responses to science assessments. We focused on overcoming the challenges of accessibility, technical complexity, and lack of explainability that have previously limited the use of artificial intelligence-based automatic scoring tools among researchers and educators. With a testing dataset comprising six assessment tasks (three binomial and three trinomial) with 1,650 student responses, we employed six prompt engineering strategies to automatically score student responses. The six strategies combined zero-shot or few-shot learning with CoT, either alone or alongside item stem and scoring rubrics. Results indicated that few-shot (acc = .67) outperformed zero-shot learning (acc = .60), with 12.6% increase. CoT, when used without item stem and scoring rubrics, did not significantly affect scoring accuracy (acc = .60). However, CoT prompting paired with contextual item stems and rubrics proved to be a significant contributor to scoring accuracy (13.44% increase for zero-shot; 3.7% increase for few-shot). We found a more balanced accuracy across different proficiency categories when CoT was used with a scoring rubric, highlighting the importance of domain-specific reasoning in enhancing the effectiveness of LLMs in scoring tasks. We also found that GPT-4 demonstrated superior performance over GPT -3.5 in various scoring tasks when combined with the single-call greedy sampling or ensemble voting nucleus sampling strategy, showing 8.64% difference. Particularly, the single-call greedy sampling strategy with GPT-4 outperformed other approaches.

Scoring student-drawn models is time-consuming. Recently released GPT-4V provides a unique opportunity to advance scientific modeling practices by leveraging the powerful image processing capability. To test this ability specifically for automatic scoring, we developed a method NERIF (Notation-Enhanced Rubric Instruction for Few-shot Learning) employing instructional note and rubrics to prompt GPT-4V to score students' drawn models for science phenomena. We randomly selected a set of balanced data (N = 900) that includes student-drawn models for six modeling assessment tasks. Each model received a score from GPT-4V ranging at three levels: 'Beginning,' 'Developing,' or 'Proficient' according to scoring rubrics. GPT-4V scores were compared with human experts' scores to calculate scoring accuracy. Results show that GPT-4V's average scoring accuracy was mean =.51, SD = .037. Specifically, average scoring accuracy was .64 for the 'Beginning' class, .62 for the 'Developing' class, and .26 for the 'Proficient' class, indicating that more proficient models are more challenging to score. Further qualitative study reveals how GPT-4V retrieves information from image input, including problem context, example evaluations provided by human coders, and students' drawing models. We also uncovered how GPT-4V catches the characteristics of student-drawn models and narrates them in natural language. At last, we demonstrated how GPT-4V assigns scores to student-drawn models according to the given scoring rubric and instructional notes. Our findings suggest that the NERIF is an effective approach for employing GPT-4V to score drawn models. Even though there is space for GPT-4V to improve scoring accuracy, some mis-assigned scores seemed interpretable to experts. The results of this study show that utilizing GPT-4V for automatic scoring of student-drawn models is promising.

Machine learning-based automatic scoring faces challenges with unbalanced student responses across scoring categories. To address this, we introduce a novel text data augmentation framework leveraging GPT-4, a generative large language model, specifically tailored for unbalanced datasets in automatic scoring. Our experimental dataset comprised student written responses to four science items. We crafted prompts for GPT-4 to generate responses, especially for minority scoring classes, enhancing the data set. We then finetuned DistillBERT for automatic scoring based on the augmented and original datasets. Model performance was assessed using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 metrics. Our findings revealed that incorporating GPT-4-augmented data remarkedly improved model performance, particularly for precision and F1 scores. Interestingly, the extent of improvement varied depending on the specific dataset and the proportion of augmented data used. Notably, we found that a varying amount of augmented data (20%-40%) was needed to obtain stable improvement for automatic scoring. Comparisons with models trained on additional student-written responses suggest that GPT-4 augmented models match those trained with student data. This research underscores the potential and effectiveness of data augmentation techniques utilizing generative large language models like GPT-4 in addressing unbalanced datasets within automated assessment.

This study highlights the potential of fine-tuned ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) for automatically scoring student written constructed responses using example assessment tasks in science education. Recent studies on OpenAI's generative model GPT-3.5 proved its superiority in predicting the natural language with high accuracy and human-like responses. GPT-3.5 has been trained over enormous online language materials such as journals and Wikipedia; therefore, more than direct usage of pre-trained GPT-3.5 is required for automatic scoring as students utilize a different language than trained material. These imply that a domain-specific model, fine-tuned over data for specific tasks, can enhance model performance. In this study, we fine-tuned GPT-3.5 on six assessment tasks with a diverse dataset of middle-school and high-school student responses and expert scoring. The six tasks comprise two multi-label and four multi-class assessment tasks. We compare the performance of fine-tuned GPT-3.5 with the fine-tuned state-of-the-art Google's generated language model, BERT. The results show that in-domain training corpora constructed from science questions and responses for BERT achieved average accuracy = 0.838, SD = 0.069. GPT-3.5 shows a remarkable average increase (9.1%) in automatic scoring accuracy (mean = 9.15, SD = 0.042) for the six tasks, p =0.001 < 0.05. Specifically, for multi-label tasks (item 1 with 5 labels; item 2 with 10 labels), GPT-3.5 achieved significantly higher scoring accuracy than BERT across all the labels, with the second item achieving a 7.1% increase. The average scoring increase for the four multi-class items for GPT-3.5 was 10.6% compared to BERT. Our study confirmed the effectiveness of fine-tuned GPT-3.5 for automatic scoring of student responses on domain-specific data in education with high accuracy. We have released fine-tuned models for public use and community engagement., Comment: Submitted to Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence

This study explores the integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI), specifically large language models, with multi-modal analogical reasoning as an innovative approach to enhance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. We have developed a novel system that utilizes the capacities of generative AI to transform intricate principles in mathematics, physics, and programming into comprehensible metaphors. To further augment the educational experience, these metaphors are subsequently converted into visual form. Our study aims to enhance the learners' understanding of STEM concepts and their learning engagement by using the visual metaphors. We examine the efficacy of our system via a randomized A/B/C test, assessing learning gains and motivation shifts among the learners. Our study demonstrates the potential of applying large language models to educational practice on STEM subjects. The results will shed light on the design of educational system in terms of harnessing AI's potential to empower educational stakeholders.

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) has gained global recognition as a future technology due to the emergence of breakthrough large language models and chatbots such as GPT-4 and ChatGPT, respectively. Compared to conventional AI models, typically designed for a limited range of tasks, demand significant amounts of domain-specific data for training and may not always consider intricate interpersonal dynamics in education. AGI, driven by the recent large pre-trained models, represents a significant leap in the capability of machines to perform tasks that require human-level intelligence, such as reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making, and even understanding human emotions and social interactions. This position paper reviews AGI's key concepts, capabilities, scope, and potential within future education, including achieving future educational goals, designing pedagogy and curriculum, and performing assessments. It highlights that AGI can significantly improve intelligent tutoring systems, educational assessment, and evaluation procedures. AGI systems can adapt to individual student needs, offering tailored learning experiences. They can also provide comprehensive feedback on student performance and dynamically adjust teaching methods based on student progress. The paper emphasizes that AGI's capabilities extend to understanding human emotions and social interactions, which are critical in educational settings. The paper discusses that ethical issues in education with AGI include data bias, fairness, and privacy and emphasizes the need for codes of conduct to ensure responsible AGI use in academic settings like homework, teaching, and recruitment. We also conclude that the development of AGI necessitates interdisciplinary collaborations between educators and AI engineers to advance research and application efforts., Comment: Position Paper on AGI for Education, Submitted to Technology and Society

This study aims at improving the performance of scoring student responses in science education automatically. BERT-based language models have shown significant superiority over traditional NLP models in various language-related tasks. However, science writing of students, including argumentation and explanation, is domain-specific. In addition, the language used by students is different from the language in journals and Wikipedia, which are training sources of BERT and its existing variants. All these suggest that a domain-specific model pre-trained using science education data may improve model performance. However, the ideal type of data to contextualize pre-trained language model and improve the performance in automatically scoring student written responses remains unclear. Therefore, we employ different data in this study to contextualize both BERT and SciBERT models and compare their performance on automatic scoring of assessment tasks for scientific argumentation. We use three datasets to pre-train the model: 1) journal articles in science education, 2) a large dataset of students' written responses (sample size over 50,000), and 3) a small dataset of students' written responses of scientific argumentation tasks. Our experimental results show that in-domain training corpora constructed from science questions and responses improve language model performance on a wide variety of downstream tasks. Our study confirms the effectiveness of continual pre-training on domain-specific data in the education domain and demonstrates a generalizable strategy for automating science education tasks with high accuracy. We plan to release our data and SciEdBERT models for public use and community engagement.

Developing models to automatically score students' written responses to science problems is critical for science education. However, collecting and labeling sufficient student responses for training models is time and cost-consuming. Recent studies suggest that pre-trained language models can be adapted to downstream tasks without fine-tuning with prompts. However, no research has employed such a prompt approach in science education. As student responses are presented with natural language, aligning the scoring procedure as the next sentence prediction task using prompts can skip the costly fine-tuning stage. In this study, we developed a zero-shot approach to automatically score student responses via Matching Exemplars as Next Sentence Prediction (MeNSP). This approach employs no training samples. We first apply MeNSP in scoring three assessment tasks of scientific argumentation and found machine-human scoring agreements, Cohen's Kappa ranges from 0.30 to 0.57, and F1 score ranges from 0.54 to 0.81. To improve the performance, we extend our research to the few-shots setting, either randomly selecting labeled student responses or manually constructing responses to fine-tune the models. We find that one task's performance is improved with more samples, Cohen's Kappa from 0.30 to 0.38, and F1 score from 0.54 to 0.59; for the two others, scoring performance is not improved. We also find that randomly selected few-shots perform better than the human expert-crafted approach. This study suggests that MeNSP can yield referable automatic scoring for student responses while significantly reducing the cost of model training. This method can benefit low-stakes classroom assessment practices in science education. Future research should further explore the applicability of the MeNSP in different types of assessment tasks in science education and improve the model performance., Comment: 10 page + 1 figure

Pseudo Artificial Intelligence bias (PAIB) is broadly disseminated in the literature, which can result in unnecessary AI fear in society, exacerbate the enduring inequities and disparities in access to and sharing the benefits of AI applications, and waste social capital invested in AI research. This study systematically reviews publications in the literature to present three types of PAIBs identified due to: a) misunderstandings, b) pseudo mechanical bias, and c) over-expectations. We discussed the consequences of and solutions to PAIBs, including certifying users for AI applications to mitigate AI fears, providing customized user guidance for AI applications, and developing systematic approaches to monitor bias. We concluded that PAIB due to misunderstandings, pseudo mechanical bias, and over-expectations of algorithmic predictions is socially harmful.