Empower Research Lab

Empower Research Lab

Narrative Learnersourcing for AI literacy

Engaging youth in AI education with inclusive, interactive narratives to enhance learning and interest in AI concepts.

Description

Collaborative technology provides powerful opportunities to engage young people in active learning experiences that are inclusive, immersive, and personally meaningful. In particular, interactive narratives have proven to be effective scaffolds for learning, and learnersourcing has emerged as a crowdsourcing adaptation to enable personalized education and quality control at-scale. We introduce the first synthesis of these ideas in the context of teaching artificial intelligence (AI), which is now seen as a critical component of 21st-century education. Specifically, we explore the design of a narrative-based learnersourcing platform where engagement is centered around a learner-made choose-your-own-adventure story. In grounding our approach, we draw from pedagogical literature on problem-based learning, digital storytelling, and recent work on learnersourcing. We report on our iterative, learner-centered design process as well as our study that demonstrates the platform’s positive effects on knowledge gains, interest in AI concepts, and the overall user experience of narrative-based learnersourcing technology.

Keywords

games & play

narrative

user study

D-Pine
Murnane Research Group at Dartmouth College | Contact: empowerlab@dartmouth.edu | Last updated: March 2025
Thayer School of Engineering