A team led by a Harvard scientist found that young students learn more from educational TV shows when they have a chance to interact with AI-powered versions of the characters from the show.

“Children spend a lot of time watching television, and high-quality educational programming is an important source of learning,” says Ying Xu, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the lead author of the study describing this research. “We also know that they learn better when an engaging adult is sitting next to them, asking questions and talking with them.”

The problem is caregiver availability doesn’t always align with children’s screen time, causing a potential missed learning opportunity. Thinking about this, Xu wondered if AI chatbot technology could assist in learning when a caregiver isn't watching a show with them.

“What if we could integrate these technologies into children’s television shows, allowing them to interact with characters and learn in an engaging way?” Xu asks.

How Was This Study Conducted?

To test her theory, Xu and her colleagues partnered with PBS Kids to conduct a study with more than 200 children aged 4-7. The students were split into three groups of 80 students. All students were shown the PBS KIDS science show, Elinor Wonders Why, which is geared toward children in preschool and early elementary school.

The show was paired with different levels of interaction. One group just watched the show. Another group watched the show but also interacted with an AI-assisted version of Elinor, who is a curious cartoon rabbit, which encouraged children to answer questions and offered tips if they got it wrong. The final group of students watched the show complete with a section in which Elinor asked the viewers questions and gave a generic reply after a pause. “This is a popular approach that many TV shows use to create a sense of interactivity,” Xu says.

The students were then asked a series of questions to assess what they had learned.

What Did This Study Find?

“We found that children who watched the interactive version performed the best, answering the most questions correctly, followed by those who watched the pseudo-interactive version, and lastly, the children who watched the broadcast version,” Xu says. “Our findings suggest a potential scalable mechanism to support children’s learning from television. We also confirmed that engaging in conversations with children helps enhance their learning from television, even when these interactions are with characters rather than a human partner.”

However, there were limitations. Though statistically significant, the difference between the three groups was smaller than expected, Xu says. “Given that this was a very short study, we might anticipate larger effects when children watch multiple videos over a longer period of time,” she says. “This is exactly the kind of study we plan to carry out in a couple of months.”

What's Next For This Type of Research?

Beyond studying how the impact of interactive AI characters influences young students over time, Xu is working on taking this concept into more natural learning environments.

“We are conducting research to understand how children might interact with and learn from these interactive videos in their homes, rather than in the lab, as this is a more natural setting where most of their media consumption occurs,” Xu says. “We are also exploring whether the benefits could extend to other STEM domains, such as computational thinking.”

Furthermore, Xu wants to learn more about the real-world applications of AI-assisted lessons. “We are particularly interested in examining how interacting with AI might help children not only comprehend the educational content but also enhance their ability to apply what they learn to solve real-world problems,” Xu says.

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Nova Labs PBS is an online platform that is crammed full of educational resources to teach students about a range of STEM subjects. Thanks to the use of real-world data, this gamifies reality to make learning engaging. 

To be clear, this is the Nova Labs from PBS, which is offered as a free resource for teachers and students age 6 and up. Comprising several different labs, this offers games in each to teach a broad range of subjects, with a science focus.

From learning about space to the inner workings of RNA, there are large swathes of information in each section that allow students to dive deep, with video and written guidance, as well as questions to keep them engaged throughout.

Useful for in class study as well as at home working, could Nova Labs PBS be right for your classroom?

• Best Tools for Teachers

What is Nova Labs PBS?

Nova Labs PBS is an online-based gamified resource center that teaches STEM and science-based subjects to kids using engaging video, questions, and answers, plus interactive content.

Nova Labs PBS is highly interactive with short video guidance followed by written facts and interactive models that allow students to play with numbers in a real-world example. That makes this great for students who might otherwise not stay as well engaged with simple written and image-based teaching.

Accessible via a web browser, this is highly compatible across lots of devices, but is best in Chrome or Firefox browsers. Usefully, it's possible to adjust quality to suit the machine and bandwidth that you have available in your school.

How does Nova Labs PBS work?

Nova Labs PBS opens with a selection of labs to pick from which include Financial, Exoplanet, Polar, Evolution, Cybersecurity, RNA, Cloud, Energy, and Sun. Head into one to be taken to a separate lander page dedicated to that lab, offering more details on what can be expected from the learning.

Once you're in the area of choice, such as Exoplanet pictured above, you're given a short video intro with real scientists talking about the area covered. An animated video then takes you to that world to explore. You then have a substation to move forward, allowing students to pick how and when they progress.

While everything is immediately available for free, as a guest, you will need to sign in using an account, if you want to save progress. This seems pretty necessary as there is a lot of information to work through that could be spread across multiple lessons with ease. This also allows students to continue where they left off, at home, for personal progress at a rate that is befitting that student.

What are the best Nova Labs PBS features?

Nova Labs PBS is super simple to use with large buttons and plenty of clear video and written guidance, making it easy to navigate for even younger students.

The use of game-like activities means students can perform experiments, playing with the data, to see how it causes effects. This allows them not only to learn how the science works but how it can vary and cause effects from their control of tools. Empowering and educating in equal measures.

If logged in, the student's answers to questions are recorded so that you can see how they are progressing or -- potentially more usefully -- to see where they are struggling. This also means it's possible to assign sections to be completed at home so you can go over it in class in flipped classroom style.

The online lab report gives students the opportunity to make notes of their progress and learning as well as to review quiz responses so far. 

How much does Nova Labs PBS cost?

Nova Labs PBS is free to use and has no adverts or tracking on the website. Since it is web-based and allows you to vary quality, it should work on most devices as well as on most internet connections.

You will need to sign-in, using a Google account or a PBS account, if you want to take advantage of tracking, pausing, and all the feedback features that can be useful for teachers. 

Nova Labs PBS best tips and tricks

Group up
Work in groups or pairs to help everyone, at varying levels, collaborate and experiment from a perspective of understanding how to learn as a team.

Print out
Use printed lab reports to take the learning back into the classroom and see how students are progressing.

Check-in
Perhaps use a teacher check-in before progressing between stages to make sure all students are understanding as they're advancing through the levels.

• Best Tools for Teachers

January 10th is Houseplant Appreciation Day. One plant that is amazing in our houses and in the wild is the orchid. Discover how orchids outwit insects to reproduce and how they have adapted to survive in their environment.

courtesy of Knovation