We don't need the computing power of a big language model to realize that we aren't doing enough to teach girls about ai.
Women make up only 22% of the global ai workforce, according to the United Nations. But the good news is that we know the formula for success in teaching ai, say Tara Chklovski, founder and CEO of Technovation, and Shanika Hope, director of technology education at Google.
Technovation, a technology education nonprofit, recently partnered with Google, UNICEF and other organizations to ai-forward-alliance-to-bridge-the-gender-based-digital-divide-302032258.html” target=”_blank” data-url=”https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/technovation-announces-the-ai-forward-alliance-to-bridge-the-gender-based-digital-divide-302032258.html”>launches ai Forward Alliance, which seeks to impact 25 million young women around the world by providing them with actionable, evidence-based ai training. The program uses the Technovation curriculum, which is available for free to educators around the world..
“76% of the girls who go through our program go into STEM careers and then into STEM careers,” Chklovski says.
The training is based on four principles that are based on motivation theory. Chklovski and Hope discuss how these principles can be used to foster ai success in girls anywhere in the world.
<h2 id="1-teaching-ai-to-girls-provide-relatable-ai-role-models-xa0″>1. Teaching ai to girls: Provide ai models they can relate to
A key step in getting girls interested in the field of ai is to provide examples of successful women in the field.
“You need to be exposed to role models, people who look like you, who talk about the challenges they overcame to get to where they are. This is essential,” says Chklovski.
“There are incredible female founder entrepreneurs who are building incredible organizations and incredible ai technology,” Hope says. “So helping girls see them helps them identify that they can do this too: they can build, use and design incredible technology that scales and solves the problems they care about in their community.”
Hope adds: “This requires us to be intentional about the type of learning we offer girls in terms of the curriculum being culturally responsive and reflective of them. Giving girls the opportunity to see girls in the curriculum in learning, so that they see themselves as technological and that their voice is included and that they are at the table.”
2. Incorporate project-based learning
Having students work toward real-world goals is another key to a successful ai education for girls.
“It really all starts with the idea of learning by doing,” Hope says. “We just have to give girls the opportunity and access to start using the tools, building them, designing them.”
Additionally, assignments should be something that each student is passionate about. “It's not enough to say, 'Oh, this is how an ai model works and, in the end, make a project.' That never works,” says Chklovski. “The Technovation model is to find a problem that interests you in your community. And then, 'Oh, by the way, these are ways you can build an ai model or train a data set to solve that problem.'”
3. Have people who believe in the success of each student
“You need people around you who have high expectations for you. And this is where it's really critical for parents to understand how they should support their daughters,” says Chklovski.
However, the support of parents, and even educators, is not enough. “It's very important to have mentors, who are neither teachers nor parents,” says Chklovski. “These are often obstacles for large-scale programs because we love the idea of putting content online and having students jump through all kinds of obstacles to learn.”
As you might expect, these online resources don't work well on their own. No matter how well one is designed, it often won't be used unless it is given a personal touch. “We learn best when there are humans who support and encourage us,” Chklovski says. “So a key part of our model is to involve the industry, volunteers and educators, and our alumnae as mentors to these girls.”
Or, as Hope says, successful ai educational programs for young women require a supportive community. “So girls can practice and have a safe space to learn to fail fast and keep going,” she says.
4. Celebrate success
The final step is to host a large-scale celebration that honors the student's success in completing the program or an ai project. These should involve many people cheering the student on in an emotional ceremony of some kind. “These are not easy to coordinate or on a large scale, but they are essential to solidify in the brain: 'Oh my God, I did something very difficult and everyone applauded me.' You never forget that,'” Chklovski says.
Part of celebrating these achievements is recognizing the real impact of the projects students have completed in the real world. For example, a student in Bolivia created an algorithm to track illegal wildlife trafficking. Another student in India trained an artificial intelligence model to recognize bird songs as a way to monitor local pollution levels.
“One of the things I love that Technovation does is that it's not really about teaching girls to code or teaching them computer science,” Hope says. “It's this holistic experience where we give girls the tools and capabilities, learning by doing, in a strong supportive environment so they can build for the future and be part of the future.”
