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Clemson to create AI-tailored professional development program with grant

Staff Report //November 9, 2020//

Clemson to create AI-tailored professional development program with grant

Staff Report //November 9, 2020//

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Clemson's AI-guided professional development program for teachers will tailor suggestions to individual teachers' needs. (Photo/Provided)With a new professional development program in the works at Clemson University, teachers may soon be able to be able to browse a list of streamed programs tailored for their specific development needs through artificial intelligence technologies.

Researchers from Clemson’s College of Education and College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences recently received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the development of the recommender system, according to a news release.

“Professional development is a $2-3 billion a year industry, and it’s critical to support and sustain teachers,” Jeff Marshall, associate dean for research and graduate studies at Clemson’s College of Education, said in the release. “Online services offered by the business world have done an extraordinary job using artificial intelligence and recommender systems to inform how we live our lives. It only makes sense that we can apply those same successful strategies to the way we help our teachers develop in the classroom.”

Marshall said the missing link is not a lack of quality professional development programs but how these programs are often not matched up with individual teachers’ needs. This program instead will use data acquired through in-person guidance at an initial set of schools and expand to a larger audience of teachers.

The first pilot schools will be in the Upstate, then followed by 12-17 districts across the state.

“In my opinion, we need to be developing and producing more socio-technically relevant work in the education sector,” Nathan McNeese, assistant professor of Clemson’s School of Computing, said in the release. “This project is really the best of many worlds: it is motivated by real world educators, allows for interdisciplinary computational systems to be built, and will allow for contributions that are both conceptual and theoretical but also applied.”

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