Abstract:

In Germany, educational and career opportunities still depend heavily on the socio-economic status and educational level of the parents. Around one in four children is currently growing up in a socio-economically weak environment. In addition to a lack of financial resources, parents from socially disadvantaged backgrounds often face the challenge of the lack of participation due to migration-related multiculturalism to adequately support their children in their educational journey.

Since 2014, the non-profit organization, Hacker School gGmbH from Germany has set itself the goal of getting socio-economically disadvantaged children and young people interested in programming and at the same time closing the gap between the prevailing educational equality and the lack of young talents in the IT industry. Their courses use a gamification approach and currently take place either locally, limited to the city of Hamburg, or virtually throughout Germany via ZOOM. The BMAS-funded research project TALAINTED, carried out in cooperation with the Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence at Stuttgart Media University, aims to transform this concept into a multilingual online format using virtual AI avatars, which, thanks to its independence of time and place, allows unlimited repetition and learning in small steps.

To find the right course design for both the students (as the main target group) and their teachers, an on-site study was carried out in two district schools in Hamburg, Germany, in February 2024. A total of 21 ninth grade students aged 14-15 and nine teachers aged 25-46 were interviewed in semi-structured, open-ended qualitative interviews lasting 30 minutes each. While the students provided information about their interests, career aspirations, language education, optimal length of learning units, role models, and inspiring people in public and private life, the interviews with the teachers focused mainly on the challenges and characteristics of the students in the classroom, as well as the potentials for lesson design, especially with regard to the content and didactic conditions for creating, realizing and implementing an online course.

Key findings from the study show, for example, that although a lot of digital work has already been made possible in some focus schools in Germany, thanks to funding from the German government's Digital Pact, this is still not being fully exploited. This is partly due to a lack of time in the curriculum, even though teachers are in favor of technological change and a variety of methods, particularly in the form of edutainment, and students are in favor of the practicality and interactivity of the content. Both the desire for content that is relevant to everyday life and the individuality of different types of learners have so far received too little attention from either side. Regarding the criteria and competences of online course design, it can be said that learning videos must be kept short to address varied attention spans for students, so that there is a balance between spoken and visually stimulating, realistic elements, to specifically trigger their short attention span, frustration tolerance and personality development, overcome language barriers, and further close the gap between reading and understanding.

Keywords:

AI, AI Education, AI avatars, IT, career, future learning, online course design.