The Advanced Education Research & Development Fund (AERDF), an education nonprofit, has launched a new initiative called AugmentED that will examine ways to “harness the power of AI to transform teaching and learning.”
In a press release, AERDF said that while much of today’s conversation centers on using AI to make current approaches to education more efficient, the group’s newest initiative will bring together educators, researchers, and technologists to reimagine the student learning experience for the age of AI, and to co-create AI-powered tools to support educational transformation.
AERDF’s mission is to unlock scientific breakthroughs and advance research-backed solutions to pressing challenges in PreK-12 education. The new AugmentED initiative will leverage AERDF’s Advanced R&D model to generate new scientific research and build dynamic prototypes.
Throughout the initiative’s lifecycle, AugmentED will partner with expert teachers, cutting edge researchers, and technologists to:
- Reimagine the roles of educators by designing innovative and AI-enhanced approaches to teaching that will equip students with future-ready skills.
- Co-design AI-powered tools alongside more effective teaching approaches to accelerate student learning and support teachers in their new roles.
- Iterate on and refine innovations in classroom settings to ensure they are effective and scalable across learning contexts.
- Generate research insights and share them widely, building an open community where educators, researchers, and technologists can learn from and build on our discoveries.
“AugmentED envisions a future where teachers and AI work in harmony to nurture the full potential of all students,” AERDF said in a press release. “This vision imagines educators in a new role: as conductors of a symphony of learning, managing an orchestra of students and AI-powered tools to transform student outcomes. Educators, for example, might use one AI tool for personalized projects, another to guide group collaboration, and a third to run engaging simulations.”
The nonprofit said that in the next few months, AugmentED will be seeking partners in education, research, and technology to help with the project.
