Using Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reading R&D Center – Digital Promise

Using Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reading R&D Center

A group of kindergarten and first-grade students pose with their favorite books in front of a school mural.
Using Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reading R&D Center (U-GAIN Reading), is a research and development hub that will investigate how to use generative artificial intelligence (AI) to improve elementary school reading instruction.

U-GAIN Reading’s focus on reading responds to an important policy priority. Recent scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show continuing declines in reading performance, especially for students who are already struggling to learn to read. Teachers are essential to learning to read, but cannot spend as much time with each individual student as needed. Technology can listen to students as they read aloud and offer guidance that accelerates their learning. Technology and teachers can work together, with technology especially useful for giving students targeted feedback as they practice reading.

The knowledge base for U-GAIN Reading is grounded in the Science of Reading, and the technology base is a research-based product that is already adopted by schools nationwide. Specific research goals include:

  • understanding how to keep students highly engaged in practicing reading;
  • how to increase the accuracy of speech recognition, particularly as accents, regional dialects, available vocabulary and other individual student characteristics vary;
  • and how to engage background and contextual knowledge to support each student’s growth of reading fluency and comprehension.

Further, the use of generative AI will be balanced with an emphasis on human review and teacher involvement in order to protect student safety and achieve high ethical standards.

U-GAIN Reading will work in partnership with school districts that have strong needs to improve reading performance and also have students with varied backgrounds and ways of speaking. This focus aims to represent the variation found across American elementary schools and to focus on using the power of generative AI for individualization. School districts with high proportions of English Learners have these characteristics and are a focus for initial U-GAIN Reading partnerships. Within every partner school district, U-GAIN’s goal is to improve reading growth for all learners.

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The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305C240040 to Digital Promise Global. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

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