Informatics in Education

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are now widely applied across different domains. As AI systems increasingly shape professional and academic domains, there is a growing need to pre-pare future professionals to work with these technologies responsibly and effectively. Accordingly, an increasing number of studies advocate AI education for undergraduates across disciplines. However, there is limited qualitative research on these students’ motivations for learning about AI and on what they are interested in learning, despite the importance of such understanding for designing motivating, engaging, and effective learning experiences. Therefore, the objective of this research is to answer the following two research questions: (1) What motivates undergraduates across disciplines to learn about AI? (2) What are undergraduates across disciplines interested in learning about AI? To answer the research questions, we conducted a survey with 128 students who voluntarily enrolled in an elective introductory AI course over three semesters. The findings indicate that these students are motivated to learn about AI not only for career-related utility but also due to its perceived societal relevance and ethical implications. Regarding learning interests, students most frequently expressed interest in learning how AI systems work, how these systems impact society positively and negatively, and how to use them effectively and responsibly. In the discussion section, we provide guidance on how these results can inform the design or adaptation of AI curricula, course invitations, and learning experiences to foster sustained engagement and meaningful learning among these students.

Physical computing covers the design and realization of interactive objects and installations and allows students to develop concrete, tangible products of the real world, which arise from the learners' imagination. This can be used in computer science education to provide students with interesting and motivating access to the different topic areas of the subject in constructionist and creative learning environments. To make many existing activities and examples of such project ideas available for classroom use and to expand the topic areas suitable for learning in such environments beyond introductory to programming, a physical computing syllabus for computer science courses in general education schools has been developed. In this paper the methods and different perspectives that were taken into account are presented. The resulting syllabus can be used to develop a constructionist computer science curriculum with physical computing.