AI for Tackling STEM Education Challenges
Artificial intelligence (AI), an emerging technology, finds increasing use in STEM education and STEM education research (e.g., Zhai et al., 2020b; Ouyang et al., 2022; Linn et al., 2023). AI, defined as a technology to mimic human cognitive behaviors, holds great potential to address some of the most challenging problems in STEM education (Neumann and Waight, 2020; Zhai, 2021). Amongst these is the challenge of supporting all students to meet the vision for science learning in the 21st century laid out, for example in the U.S.
To best support students in developing competence, assessments that allow students to use knowledge to solve challenging problems and make sense of phenomena are needed. These assessments need to be designed and tested to validly locate students on the learning progression and hence provide feedback to students and teachers about meaningful next steps in their learning. Yet, such tasks are time-consuming to score and challenging to provide students with appropriate feedback to develop their knowledge to the next level.