Week 1 – Jan. 21, 2022

Hello! Welcome to the development blog for trAIn & gAIn.

Introduction

trAIn&gAIn is an Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) project making a collection of mini-games to help students better understand Artificial Intelligence. The mini-games will function as support materials for AI courses and curriculum designed by Artificial Intelligence Pathways Institute, Boys & Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania (BGCWPA).

We are offering a “training” pathway to help students “gain” knowledge, in pursuit of explaining AI concepts visually, interactively and correctly.

Meet the client

Phil Light, ETC Alumnus (2007), a project manager working on STEM for the BGCWPA, is the client providing us with mentorship and guidance throughout the semester. 

The area of focus is the AIPI course that BGCWPA offers to students between the ages of 14-18, where they teach them AI concepts. This curriculum is made by Christine Nguyen.

Understanding client’s needs

The client presented us with different problems that they were trying to solve. They asked us to pick one of the below and improve the existing experience in that.

-Engaging students in learning AI concepts better.

-Making it easier for the teachers to prepare for the AI classes.

-Explaining the AI modules better.

Class structure

A typical class in the AIPI course has three sections:

-Lecture: The teacher teaches the concept through google slides.

-Activity: The students do an activity related to the concept that was taught in the lecture.

-Reflection: The teacher asking the students what their thoughts were during the activity.

First brainstorming session

The first step was getting familiar with the modules that they had in the curriculum.

As a team, we started to look into places where we could offer the most value. We were thinking about ways we could add to or modify the existing modules or activities that would meet any of the client’s needs.

We came up with two different ideas that were very different, but could give us a direction in terms of where to head on. These were:

-Creating a collection of mini games that cover the AI concepts in the modules, as an interactive medium to teach the students. These games were not intended to replace the lectures, but be added as an activity for the students to do in class after the lectures.

-Publishing a website that has all the modules integrated together with the addition of mini games for each module, explaining the concepts further to the students.

Production

To keep things organized and clear, we set up a Trello board for the team. This made sure everyone was on track and was aware of the team’s progress and blockers. Apart from this, we used Google Jamboard to construct a composition box for the project. This helped us visualize the project’s direction and get input from other people on our approach.