KU lands funding to expand center helping educators use AI, create more ed tech leaders

LAWRENCE — Researchers at the University of Kansas and University of Central Florida have received funding to continue and expand work of the Center for Innovation, Design & Digital Learning, which will help educators across the country keep up with rapidly evolving technology and create more leaders guiding the use of tech like artificial intelligence across the educational spectrum.

The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, has awarded CIDDL a five-year, $3.5 million grant to continue and expand its operations. Founded in 2020, the center offers technical assistance, professional learning and collaboration opportunities to help educators strengthen technology use in their programs.

The original funding supported CIDDL’s work to ensure higher education faculty could integrate technology and practices supported by new technologies effectively into their programs. The new funding will allow CIDDL to serve as the National Center to Improve Faculty Capacity to Use Educational Technology in Special Education Personnel and Leadership Preparation Programs.

“AI has become front of mind for people in just about every sector of society in recent years, especially in education, higher education and K-12,” said James Basham, professor of special education at KU and director of CIDDL. “We’ve seen this coming for several years, and this new funding will help ensure we can continue focusing on new and assistive technologies and be able to prepare future educators to use AI and other innovative technologies in meaningful ways in both teaching and research.”

KU is partnering with the Toni Jennings Exceptional Education Institute at the University of Central Florida to lead CIDDL. The new funding will also support partnering with the Institute for Information Sciences at KU to ensure the center has leadership in both education and computer science backgrounds.

“As we think about the future of humanity, it’s not going to be focused on single disciplines, but interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary,” Basham said. “With this partnership we’ll be able to bring together scholars and students from computer science, educational sciences and related areas to combine our knowledge to address pressing matters like data privacy and security in education.”

In addition to addressing real-world problems like ensuring safety in AI systems used in education, CIDDL will create a network of administrators, teachers and researchers who are staying abreast of technological developments and applying them in their own universities, schools and communities.

The center offers CIDDL Community, a network of educators across the country working to help one another understand and innovate in the use of technology in education. CIDDL leaders regularly host online office hours in which they discuss new developments, and the new round of funding will support expanded offerings.

“We want to offer resources, downloads and courses for educators to discuss what tools they are using in their programs, and we will also offer live seminars with our principal investigators, share newsletters with updates and will have downloadable resources, blogs and interviews every week,” said Angelica Fulchini Scruggs, CIDDL researcher. “Educators will drive the topics we cover.”

So far CIDDL has helped increase knowledge, capacity, adoption and integration of innovative technologies such as educational, assistive and AI within special education personnel and leadership preparation programs, Basham said. The center has published guidelines on the responsible use of AI in education, presented to state boards of education and helped ensure technology serves vulnerable learners. 

The new round of funding will continue that work and allow the center to expand the number of leaders and educators across the country who not only keep up with rapidly evolving advancements in technology, but ensure they are adopted in safe, meaningful ways for students and communities across the country.