Research Projects

We engage in multidisciplinary, iterative, and evidence-based research and development with diverse stakeholders to create new technologies, activities, practices and programs for real-world impact in homes, schools, afterschool programs and online communities. A list of publications for these projects can be found here.

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Selected Publications

AI Education Peer-reviewed Research Articles and Preprints

MIT App Inventor - 2021

Development of an Instructional Tool for Young Children to Learn AI

Ting-Chia Hsu, Hal Abelson, Natalie Lao, Yu-Han Tseng. (2021). Behavioral-Pattern Exploration and Development of An Instructional Tool for Young Children to Learn AI. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 100012..

Preprint
DAIly Team - 2021

Developing Middle School Students’ AI Literacy

Lee, I., Ali, S., Zhang, H., DiPaola, D., & Breazeal, C. (2021). Developing Middle School Students’ AI Literacy. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’21).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2021

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

Williams, R. (2021). How to Train Your Robot: Project-Based AI Education for Middle School Classrooms. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’21).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2021

Text Classification for AI Education

Reddy, T., Williams, R., & Breazeal, C. (2021). Text Classification for AI Education. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’21).

Paper
STEP Lab, Personal Robots Group - 2021

The Contour to Classification game

Lee, I., & Ali, S. (2021). The Contour to Classification game. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2021

What are GANs?: Introducing Generative Adversarial Networks to Middle School Students

Ali, S., DiPaola, D., & Breazeal, C (2021). What are GANs?: Introducing Generative Adversarial Networks to Middle School Students. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2021

PoseBlocks: A Toolkit for Creating (and Dancing) with AI

Jordan, B., Devasia, N., Hong, J., Williams, R., & Breazeal, C (2021). PoseBlocks: A Toolkit for Creating (and Dancing) with AI. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2021

Teacher Perspectives on How to Train Your Robot, A Middle School AI and Ethics Curriculum

Williams, R., Kaputsos, S., & Breazeal, C (2021). Teacher Perspectives on How to Train Your Robot, A Middle School AI and Ethics Curriculum. Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Education Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI ’21).

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2021

K-12 Conversational Artificial Intelligence Literacy Curriculum and Development Tools

Jessica Van Brummelen, Tommy Heng, Viktoriya Tabunshchyk, (to appear 2021). Teaching Tech to Talk: K-12 Conversational Artificial Intelligence Literacy Curriculum and Development Tools. AAAI Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI-21).

Preprint
MIT App Inventor - 2020

An Exploration of Machine Learning Interface Design

Jessica Van Brummelen, Kevin Weng, Phoebe Lin, Catherine Yeo, (2020). CONVO: What does conversational programming need? An exploration of machine learning interface design. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2020

Decoding Design Agendas: an Ethical Design Activity for Middle School Students

DiPaola, D., Payne, B.H., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Decoding Design Agendas: an Ethical Design Activity for Middle School Students. Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC 2020), 1—10.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2019

Constructionism, Ethics, and Creativity: Developing Primary and Middle School Artificial Intelligence Education

Ali, S., Payne, B.H., Williams, R., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Constructionism, Ethics, and Creativity: Developing Primary and Middle School Artificial Intelligence Education. International Workshop on Education in Artificial Intelligence K-12 (EDUAI’19), 13381—13388.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2020

Can Children Emulate a Robotic Non-Player Character’s Figural Creativity?

Ali, S., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Can Children Emulate a Robotic Non-Player Character’s Figural Creativity?. Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ’20).

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2020

Using Transfer Learning, Spectrogram Audio Classification, and MIT App Inventor to Facilitate Machine Learning Understanding

Bhatia, N. & Lao, N. (2020). Using Transfer Learning, Spectrogram Audio Classification, and MIT App Inventor to Facilitate Machine Learning Understanding. International Conference on Computational Thinking Education 2020 (CTE2020).

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2020

Experiences from Teaching Actionable Machine Learning at the University Level through a Small Practicum Approach

Lao, N., Lee, I., & Abelson, H. (2020). Experiences from Teaching Actionable Machine Learning at the University Level through a Small Practicum Approach. International Conference on Computational Thinking Education 2020 (CTE2020).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2020

Escape!Bot: Child-Robot Interaction to Promote Creative Expression During Gameplay

Devasia, N., Ali, S., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Escape!Bot: Child-Robot Interaction to Promote Creative Expression During Gameplay. Extended Abstracts of the 2020 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ’20 EA).

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2020

Engaging Teachers to Co-Design Integrated AI Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms

Jessica Van Brummelen, Phoebe Lin, (2020 in submission). Engaging Teachers to Co-Design Integrated AI Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms..

Preprint
MIT App Inventor - 2020

Designing AI Learning Experiences for K-12

Xiaofei Zhou, Jessica Van Brummelen, Phoebe Lin (2020 in submission). Designing AI Learning Experiences for K-12: Emerging Works, Future Opportunities and a Design Framework..

Preprint
MIT App Inventor - 2019

CONVO: What does conversational programming need?

Van Brummelen, J., Weng, K., Lin, P., & Yeo, C. (2020). CONVO: What does conversational programming need?. 2020 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 1-5.

Paper
MIT App Inventor & Personal Robots Group - 2019

Zhorai: Designing a Conversational Agent for Children to Explore Machine Learning Concepts

Lin, P., Van Brummelen, J., Lukin, G., Williams, R. & Breazeal, C. (2020). Zhorai: Designing a Conversational Agent for Children to Explore Machine Learning Concepts. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 34, 13381—13388.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2020

Teaching and learning with children: Impact of reciprocal peer learning with a social robot on children’s learning and emotive engagement

Chen, H., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Teaching and Learning with Children: Impact of Reciprocal Peer Learning with a Social Robot on Children’s Learning and Emotive Engagement. Computers & Education, 150(8).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2020

Impact of Interaction Context on the Student Affect-Learning Relationship in Child-Robot Interaction

Chen, H., Park, HW., Zhang, X., & Breazeal, C. (2020). Impact of Interaction Context on the Student Affect-Learning Relationship in Child-Robot Interaction. Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 389–397.

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2019

PIC: A Personal Image Classification Webtool for High School Students

Tang, D., Utsumi, Y., & Lao, N. (2019). PIC: A Personal Image Classification Webtool for High School Students. Proceedings of the 2019 IJCAI EduAI Workshop.

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2019

A Deep Learning Practicum: Concepts and Practices for Teaching Actionable Machine Learning at the Tertiary Education Level

Lao, N., Lee, I., & Abelson, H. (2019). A Deep Learning Practicum: Concepts and Practices for Teaching Actionable Machine Learning at the Tertiary Education Level. IATED2019 Proceedings (12th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation).

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2019

Design of a Virtual Tool for Estimating Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading

Ovienmhada, U., Lao, N., & Van Brummelen, J. (2019). Design of a Virtual Tool for Estimating Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading. 2019 International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI), 7724-7732.

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2019

Learning to program conversationally: A conversational agent to further democratize programming

Van Brummelen, J., Yeo, C., & Weng, K. (2019). Learning to program conversationally: A conversational agent to further democratize programming. 14th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED2020).

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2019

A Semantics-based Model for Predicting Children's Vocabulary

Grover, I., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Semantics-Based Model for Predicting Children’s Vocabulary. Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-19), 1358–1365.

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2019

Conversational Agents to Democratize Artificial Intelligence

Van Brummelen, J. (2019). Conversational Agents to Democratize Artificial Intelligence. 2019 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 239-240.

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2019

The Popstar, the Poet, and the Grinch: Relating Artificial Intelligence to the Computational Thinking Framework with Block-based Coding

Van Brummelen, J., Shen, J.W., & Patton, E.W. (2019). The Popstar, the Poet, and the Grinch: Relating Artificial Intelligence to the Computational Thinking Framework with Block-based Coding. Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Thinking Education, 160-161.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2019

A Model-Free Affective Reinforcement Learning Approach to Personalization of an Autonomous Social Robot Companion for Early Literacy Education

Park, HW., Grover, I., Spaulding, S., Gomez, L., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Model-Free Affective Reinforcement Learning Approach to Personalization of an Autonomous Social Robot Companion for Early Literacy Education. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33, 687–694.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2019

PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education

Williams, R., Park, HW., Oh,L., & Breazeal, C. (2019). PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33, 9729–9736.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2019

Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot?

Ali, S., Moroso, T., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot?. Proceedings of the 2019 on Creativity and Cognition, 359-368.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2019

A is for Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Activities on Young Children's Perceptions of Robots

Williams, R., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Is for Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Activities on Young Children’s Perceptions of Robots. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–11.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2018

A Social Robot System for Modeling Children’s Word Pronunciation

Spaulding, S., Chen, H., Ali, S., Kulinski, M., & Breazeal, C. (2018). A Social Robot System for Modeling Children’s Word Pronunciation. Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (Socially Interactive Agents Track), 1658-1666.

Paper
MIT App Inventor - 2018

Learning to Program Conversationally: A Conversational Agent to Further Democratize Programming

Patton, E.W., Druga, S., & Van Brummelen, J. (2018). Panel: Block Abstractions for AI. Proceedings of the BLOCKS+ at Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH), 1-2.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2017

Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer

Park, HW., Rosenberg-Kima, R., Rosenberg, M., Gordon, G., & Breazeal, C. (2017). Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 137-145.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2016

Affect-Aware Student Models for Robot Tutors

Spaulding, S., Gordon, G., & Breazeal, C. (2016). Affect-Aware Student Models for Robot Tutors. Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems, 864–872.

Paper
Personal Robots Group - 2015

Can Children Catch Curiosity from a Social Robot?

Gordon, G., Breazeal, C., & Engel, S. (2015). >Can Children Catch Curiosity from a Social Robot? Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 91-98.

Paper

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