Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly developing field that is fundamentally transforming our world.  AI applications bring new opportunities that can greatly benefit our society, but they also bring new challenges that pose considerable risks to humankind. While the topic of AI is usually covered in tertiary education programs, many countries around the globe are recognizing the importance of introducing AI and its ethical use earlier, at the pre-tertiary level, to our young generation.

In Hong Kong, the Education Bureau has been actively working in this direction, recently updating the curriculum guidelines to incorporate relevant AI components in the secondary-level subject of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).  Under the Government’s support, many local secondary and even primary schools have begun to introduce AI elements in their classrooms.  However, such an important initiative is met with the challenge that there is a limited number of secondary school teachers with training in AI.  In addition, there is no existing AI curriculum with supportive technical infrastructure ready for use.  As a result, many schools focus only on teaching programming and robotics.

In order to address the challenges above, CUHK has launched an AI education initiative to support secondary school education for Hong Kong -- the CUHK Jockey Club AI for the Future Project (中大賽馬會「智」為未來計劃) (“the Project”). The effort is jointly spearheaded by the Faculties of Engineering and Education, and funded by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. The mission of this three-year Project is to design and develop a sustainable pre-tertiary AI education framework for Hong Kong, which includes a comprehensive AI curriculum, the supporting technical infrastructure, as well as a conducive ecosystem involving the government, educators, engineers and industrial partners to bring Hong Kong’s pre-tertiary education forward to prepare our young generation to be future-ready with exposure in AI.

Since its inception in August 2019, the Project has worked in close collaboration with 6 selected pioneering secondary schools, through a co-creation process that leads to the design, development and deployment of a junior secondary AI curriculum. This co-creation process leverages CUHK’s strong AI expertise in the Faculty of Engineering, strong pedagogical expertise in the Faculty of Education, as well as the frontline teaching experiences of the Pioneering Schools’ teachers.  This co-creation process has produced the first-ever comprehensive AI curriculum in Hong Kong, comprising 12 chapters and 55 modules organized under the pedagogical framework of Awareness, Knowledge, Interactions, Empowerment and Ethics and Impact. In particular, AI Ethics and Future of Work are emphasized throughout the curriculum in order for our students to acquire, at an early age, the important perspectives relating to ethical use of AI technologies which are powerful and transformative, as well as guarding themselves against misuse of AI technologies.   

In addition to the chapters and modules, the curriculum is also supported with hands-on experiments, hardware and software toolkits, an e-learning platform, assessment and evaluation surveys, as well as public educational events and activities.  The Project team has specially designed the hardware toolkit, “CUHK-JC iCar”, with built-in AI functions that tightly couple with the delivery of specific chapters and modules in junior secondary classrooms.

Due to COVID-19, pilot teaching of the developed curriculum by the 6 Pioneering Schools has been mostly conducted through online learning.  While this is not planned, it has nevertheless allowed us to gain valuable experience on how AI education may be conducted through alternative modes of teaching and learning.  Furthermore, the Baseline Assessment and Evaluation Report for the pilot teaching in the first year indicates that our AI curriculum has successfully created strong, positive impacts on both teachers and students alike in the teaching and learning of AI.  Learning data analytics show that the Project’s curriculum has substantially enhanced our students’ awareness and understanding of AI, as well as our teachers’ abilities to develop their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in teaching AI.

Looking to the future, the Project will continue with its iterative curriculum enhancements through co-creation by educators across the secondary and tertiary sectors.  This process will be informed by feedback from the pilot teaching and assessment in the junior secondary classrooms. An AI textbook for junior secondary forms will be also produced, together with the supporting technological infrastructure.  We believe that the outcomes of the Project will serve as a valuable conduit for the formal introduction of the AI subject into Hong Kong’s pre-tertiary curriculum, and usher Hong Kong and our region into a new chapter of AI in education.

Learn more about the Project:

cuhkjc-aiforfuture.hk/ (Website)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNNCGmpO9x0& (Video)

Professor Yeung Yam

Principle Investigator, CUHK Jockey Club AI for the Future Project

(Disclaimer: The photo was taken in due observance of strict personal and environment hygiene to prevent transmission of COVID-19. Persons involved in the shooting process worn a surgical mask and maintained social distance from the others at all times, only except an individual having his/her own shooting scene.  The shooting scenes with a group of people without surgical masks were taken before COVID-19 pandemic.)