Abstract
Recent advances in artificial intelligence have demonstrated the importance of nurturing artificial intelligence literacy among citizens of different backgrounds to shape future society. Distinct from the traditional approach focusing on programming, a module emphasising artificial intelligence concepts was delivered to 29 students at a Finnish university in the academic years 2021–2022 and 2022–2023. The students came from various European and Asian countries, with 76% of them reporting not knowing programming. The results of pre- and post-module surveys on artificial intelligence literacy and concepts tests demonstrated that through the module, the students acquired statistically significant improvements in their understanding of artificial intelligence concepts and their self-perceived level of artificial intelligence literacy. Through reflective writing before and after completing the module, the students shared a change in perception: from being uncertain about the relevance of artificial intelligence to daily life and inappropriately equating it with robotics before completing the module to understanding more about the working principles behind machine learning after completing the module. In addition to the favourable evaluations from the students, this article reports the positive results of a concept-focused approach to nurturing artificial intelligence literacy among university students from multiple cultural backgrounds.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the international cooperative project Global Media Education through the Development of Online Teaching, which involves the University of Lapland, Finland, and the Education University of Hong Kong, China, and financed by the Finnish National Agency for Education, Team Finland Knowledge. The project involves the UNITWIN/UNESCO Network on Teacher Education for Social Justice and Diversity; the University of Lapland, Finland; the UNESCO Chair programme; and the Faculty of Humanities of the Education University of Hong Kong, China. More information on the project is available at https://glomed.webnode.fi. The authors also acknowledge funding support for this project from the Li Ka Shing Foundation and a grant from the Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. EdUHK CB302), particularly in developing the AI course material and evaluation tools.
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Kong, S.C., Korte, SM., Cheung, W.MY. (2023). Nurturing Artificial Intelligence Literacy in Students with Diverse Cultural Backgrounds. In: Huang, YM., Rocha, T. (eds) Innovative Technologies and Learning. ICITL 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14099. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40113-8_2
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