PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (April 12, 2023) — Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) in collaboration with Alabama A&M University (AAMU) have been awarded a $160,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) grant for Artificial Intelligence (AI) enhanced Personalized Adaptive Learning (PAL) tools.

The two universities will collaborate in developing the aforementioned AI-enhance PAL tools consisting of a series of online learning modules for programming education. The project will educate graduate and undergraduate students in research on online tool development, data analysis, and AI techniques. The project will result in an innovative solution to implement PAL to STEM education.

“This grant will serve to advance both AI research and STEM education at PVAMU,” said PVAMU Vice President of Research & Innovation Magesh Rajan, Ph.D., P.E., MBA. “The resulting advanced research will not only help to improve the institution’s R2 status, but also work towards the long-term goal of achieving R1 institution status.”

Assistant Professor, Xishuang Dong, PhD., will serve as the Principal Investigator (PI) in this project. Dr. Dong will work alongside several Co-PIs in PVAMU’s College of Engineering: AT&T Endowed Professor Lijun Qian PhD., Dr. Xiangfang (Lindsey) Li, Ph.D., and Dean Pamela Obiomon, PhD.

Xishuang Dong, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, College of Engineering

“Getting this grant was incredibly exciting for me because it marks the first education grant from NSF that enables me to collaborate with a multidisciplinary team in using advanced AI techniques to improve STEM education,” said Dr. Dong. “In today’s era of big data and AI, it is necessary to update STEM education in order to prepare students for success in their academic and industry careers.”

According to Dr. Dong, the goal of the project is to improve programming skills for engineering students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by integrating PAL pedagogies with advanced AI techniques. By doing so, The University promotes the application of AI in the education field and creates a smart environment that enhances student engagement in programming learning.

“This project will not only advance and expand my research in areas such as reinforcement learning, natural language processing (NLP), and AI-enhanced STEM education, but also contribute to the overall advancement of these fields,” Dong continued.

Dr. Dong’s team plans to create an AI-based recommender system that will provide students with personalized learning paths based on their background and prior knowledge. This will help to accelerate programming learning and improve learning outcomes. Additionally, the researchers will build a personalized programming assistant using ChatGPT, which will provide detailed instructions and references to students throughout the programming learning process. The project will culminate in the creation of a basic platform that will enable students to access and share learning materials.

PVAMU will be responsible for conducting a significant portion of the proposed AI-related research. PVAMU students will have the opportunity to participate in this research through working with faculty and staff. Additionally, feedback from PVAMU students will be collected on the use of AI tools developed through this project, in order to better understand and improve the functionality of these tools to meet the requirements of PVAMU students.

The results and tools will be disseminated to other HBCUs and learning institutions. It will address the critical needs for engineering education and train the future workforce of the nation.

By Jenna Craig