Abstract:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming one of the key technologies of modern times, significantly influencing various areas of life. Due to its growing presence and impact on individuals and society, there is an increasing need to develop AI literacy as early as primary school. This paper examines how 4th and 5th grade students (aged 9 to 11) experience, perceive, and evaluate interactive learning materials for learning about AI, and whether such an approach effectively stimulates their situational interest in further learning. The teaching material is designed as a multimodal resource that combines visual and verbal explanations with interactive tasks, following the principles of Mayer's cognitive theory of multimedia learning. We are interested in the extent to which such multimodal teaching materials help students perceive the content as understandable, interesting, and relevant, and whether these perceptions are also linked to situational interest and readiness for further learning.

In Slovenian primary schools, AI literacy currently appears mainly in elective subjects and occasional activities, with a lack of systematically developed and adapted teaching materials. We therefore presented AI concept in the form of an interactive video, as it is openly accessible and allows for multimodal presentation, while also serving as support for teachers in teaching topics for which they do not yet have sufficient subject matter and didactic skills.

The research is based on a quasi-experimental teaching intervention carried out with 4th and 5th grade students from three primary schools. A total of 13 lessons were conducted, during which the teacher used interactive video on the predictive model as the central teaching tool in the classroom. Students watched the video independently on tablet computers and completed the tasks included in it, receiving immediate feedback on each task. After watching the video, they completed a questionnaire with twelve statements on a five-point Likert scale. The questionnaire measured their assessment of the comprehensibility, interest, clarity, and usefulness of the teaching material, as well as their situational interest and willingness to continue learning about AI.

These results show that students generally rate the teaching material very positively. Most believe that the included tasks helped them understand how AI works, and approximately two-thirds showed increased interest in further learning about AI after the lesson. More than half of the students expressed a willingness to engage with AI content outside the school environment. Strong positive correlations between interest ratings and willingness to continue learning independently confirm that teaching materials designed in this way effectively contribute to increasing situational interest in learning about AI. Based on the results, we conclude that learning about AI with the help of interactive videos is effective, interesting, and understandable for students. This approach not only contributes to the understanding of the basic concepts of AI, but also significantly strengthens situational interest and readiness for further learning about these topics. The early development of AI literacy in students appears to be meaningful, as students recognise the understanding of AI as important for their everyday lives and further education.

Keywords:

Artificial intelligence literacy, multimodal video-based learning, interactive video, primary school students.