Research Projects

We engage in multidisciplinary, iterative, and evidence-based research and development with diverse stakeholders to create new technologies, activities, practices and programs for real-world impact in homes, schools, afterschool programs and online communities. A list of publications for these projects can be found here.

AI & Growth Mindset

We developed a novel cognitive-affective architecture that integrates models of curiosity, understanding of mindsets, and expressive social behaviors to advance the state-of the-art of robot companions.

GANPaint for Kids

Children can create artwork using GANPaint in Scratch and learn about GANs.

BeaverWorks at MIT

A project-based summer STEM program for talented high school students.

Conversational AI with Zhorai

Zhorai is an artificially intelligence conversational agent through which children grades 3-5 can learn about AI.

Creativity with Scratch and AI

Scratch helps kids learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and collaborate.

Primary School AI for K-2nd Grade

Primary AI for K-2nd grade introduces early elementary school students to robotics and artificial intelligence.

AI & Data Privacy Activities

Data and privacy design activities developed for the Girl Scouts of Eastern MA.

PopBots: Early AI Education

The PopBots Platform is a tool to introduce young children to programming, robotics, and artificial intelligence by allowing them to build and program their own robots.

Primary School AI for 3-5th Grade

Primary AI for 3-5th grade introduces upper elementary school students to robotics, artificial intelligence, and design thinking.

At-Home AI Conversations

4-Steps to Debating technology and AI with your child.

Selected Publications

AI Education Peer-reviewed Research Articles and Preprints

MIT App Inventor – 2019

Learning to program conversationally: A conversational agent to further democratize programming

Van Brummelen, J., Yeo, C., & Weng, K. (2019). Learning to program conversationally: A conversational agent to further democratize programming. 14th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED2020).

Personal Robots Group – 2019

A Semantics-based Model for Predicting Children’s Vocabulary

Grover, I., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Semantics-Based Model for Predicting Children’s Vocabulary. Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-19), 1358–1365.

MIT App Inventor – 2019

Conversational Agents to Democratize Artificial Intelligence

Van Brummelen, J. (2019). Conversational Agents to Democratize Artificial Intelligence. 2019 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 239-240.

MIT App Inventor – 2019

The Popstar, the Poet, and the Grinch: Relating Artificial Intelligence to the Computational Thinking Framework with Block-based Coding

Van Brummelen, J., Shen, J.W., & Patton, E.W. (2019). The Popstar, the Poet, and the Grinch: Relating Artificial Intelligence to the Computational Thinking Framework with Block-based Coding. Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Thinking Education, 160-161.

Personal Robots Group – 2019

A Model-Free Affective Reinforcement Learning Approach to Personalization of an Autonomous Social Robot Companion for Early Literacy Education

Park, HW., Grover, I., Spaulding, S., Gomez, L., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Model-Free Affective Reinforcement Learning Approach to Personalization of an Autonomous Social Robot Companion for Early Literacy Education. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33, 687–694.

Personal Robots Group – 2019

PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education

Williams, R., Park, HW., Oh,L., & Breazeal, C. (2019). PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33, 9729–9736.

Personal Robots Group – 2019

Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot?

Ali, S., Moroso, T., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot?. Proceedings of the 2019 on Creativity and Cognition, 359-368.

Personal Robots Group – 2019

A is for Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Activities on Young Children’s Perceptions of Robots

Williams, R., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Is for Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Activities on Young Children’s Perceptions of Robots. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–11.

Personal Robots Group – 2018

A Social Robot System for Modeling Children’s Word Pronunciation

Spaulding, S., Chen, H., Ali, S., Kulinski, M., & Breazeal, C. (2018). A Social Robot System for Modeling Children’s Word Pronunciation. Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (Socially Interactive Agents Track), 1658-1666.

MIT App Inventor – 2018

Learning to Program Conversationally: A Conversational Agent to Further Democratize Programming

Patton, E.W., Druga, S., & Van Brummelen, J. (2018). Panel: Block Abstractions for AI. Proceedings of the BLOCKS+ at Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH), 1-2.

Personal Robots Group – 2017

Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer

Park, HW., Rosenberg-Kima, R., Rosenberg, M., Gordon, G., & Breazeal, C. (2017). Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 137-145.

Personal Robots Group – 2016

Affect-Aware Student Models for Robot Tutors

Spaulding, S., Gordon, G., & Breazeal, C. (2016). Affect-Aware Student Models for Robot Tutors. Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems, 864–872.

Personal Robots Group – 2015

Can Children Catch Curiosity from a Social Robot?

Gordon, G., Breazeal, C., & Engel, S. (2015). >Can Children Catch Curiosity from a Social Robot? Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 91-98.

DAIly Team – 2021

Developing Middle School Students’ AI Literacy

Lee, I., Ali, S., Zhang, H., DiPaola, D., & Breazeal, C. (2021). Developing Middle School Students’ AI Literacy. Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’21)

MIT App Inventor – 2021

Development of an Instructional Tool for Young Children to Learn AI

Ting-Chia Hsu, Hal Abelson, Natalie Lao, Yu-Han Tseng. (2021). Behavioral-Pattern Exploration and Development of An Instructional Tool for Young Children to Learn AI. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 100012..