ISEA Hackweek - Advances AI for Education Analytics

Excited to share that I recently completed a transformative Hackweek as part of the ISEA (Innovation Science for Education Analytics) program, which I’ve been fortunate to be a part of for the last six months. This intensive week brought together 18 talented fellows, esteemed faculty, and industry sponsors to tackle pressing challenges in educational research and practice.

Our project, sponsored by Colleague.AI, focused on enhancing their LLM-powered assistant for teachers. We dove deep into understanding what constitutes high-quality, inclusive lesson plan materials and worked on improving Colleague’s lesson plan generation capabilities.

A highlight of the week was a thought-provoking panel discussion led by Dr. Min Sun on “Envision Generative AI Use Cases in K-12 Education and Capacity Building Strategies.” It was inspiring to explore how AI can enhance teaching efficiency and expand access to quality education, especially in rural areas.

We were honored to have Dr. Liz Albro, IES Commissioner, join us for this event. Her presence underscored the importance of bridging the gap between AI/data science and K-12 education. I’m deeply grateful to Colleague.AI for their sponsorship and support throughout this project. Their commitment to improving educational tools is truly commendable.

This Hackweek was an incredible opportunity to apply cutting-edge AI/ML techniques to real-world educational challenges. I’m looking forward to sharing more about our outcomes at the upcoming Fall Virtual Conference.

A huge thank you to the ISEA program, supported by IES, UW College of Education, UW eScience Institute, and the University of Oregon, for this invaluable experience.