Artificial Intelligence For All: A Framework for a College Certificate

This implementation and evaluation project from Miami Dade College (MDC) aims to serve the national interest by increasing community colleges’ capacity to develop and offer courses in artificial intelligence (AI) with the AI for All project. MDC plans to attract and train more students in AI by creating a College Credit Certificate in AI Framework.

Innovative features of the project include an HSI community college adapting AI courses originally developed for a four-year university program and combining them with multiple on-ramps and supports for engaging students such as bootcamps, workshops, and mentoring. The interdisciplinary focus will allow for weaving AI engagement across MDC’s colleges and programs providing students with a foundational literacy of AI that will inform whatever career path they follow.

The long-term impacts will include increasing awareness and engagement for non-computer science students in AI courses, developing a four-year AI degree at an HSI community college; and broadening participation of groups historically underrepresented in computing careers.

The project’s goal is to develop AI courses and an interdisciplinary certificate that will lead to successful student outcomes, while building capacity for the development of a four-year degree in AI at an HSI community college. The STEM education research will explore the computing identity development of students participating in the AI for All project activities, examining how multiple entry points into and paths through the certificate program function to build STEM identity and AI self-efficacy, particularly in Black and Hispanic students.

The findings will inform computer science education practices and policies for MDC’s continued work across other computer science degree programs. It will also inform the work of other HSI community colleges developing AI programs. This research will be of value to universities seeking to increase the success of their Hispanic and Black students pursuing degrees in computer science.

The project evaluation will examine the collaboration process between MDC and its partners and those findings will help inform MDC’s future collaborations, and those of other community colleges who would like to explore these types of partnerships. The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-serving Institutions Program (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs.

Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also draw from these approaches to generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.