Thriving Communities Research Pilot Grant: Impact
Investing in the Starting Point of Community-Engaged Research
Every impactful community-engaged research project has to start somewhere. Sometimes, it starts with a conversation, a question, or a community-identified need that does not yet have an easy answer. The Thriving Communities Research Pilot Grant was developed to support that starting point.
Meaningful partnerships take time to build, and the best solutions are often developed with communities, not simply for them. Thriving Communities creates space for VCU researchers and community organizations to learn from one another while building relationships, generating preliminary data, and gaining early insights that can help promising ideas grow.
Each month, DCE will feature a past Thriving Communities grantee and hear directly from the faculty member about what the funding made possible, how partnerships shaped the work, and what they learned along the way.
This Month: Radhika Barua, Ph.D.
Radhika Barua, Ph.D., associate professor in VCU’s College of Engineering, served as principal investigator for AI for Thriving Communities: Enhancing Educational Outcomes Through AI Learning Support. The project brought together faculty, students, and community partners to examine how hands-on AI learning can influence teaching practices and student engagement. The study explores how AI training influences teachers’ confidence, perceptions, and use of AI, and how AI-based learning experiences affect student engagement and learning.
The interdisciplinary partnership included John Fife, Ph.D., director of VCU’s Center for Innovation in STEM Education in the School of Education, as well as community partners AI Ready RVA and the Richmond Institute of Technology and Science. VCU graduate and undergraduate students also contributed to the research and implementation of the project.
We asked Dr. Barua to reflect on the project, the partnerships, and what the Thriving Communities grant made possible.
Here is what she shared.
What did the Thriving Communities grant allow you and your partners to do?
The grant helped us take AI education beyond the university and put it into practice with teachers and students. We held a free, 10-hour workshop attended by 146 teachers and worked with RITS on a 40-hour summer camp. The grant also supported 17 camp scholarships, allowing about a third of the campers to attend on scholarship. Those are opportunities we would have had a much harder time offering without this support.
How did the partnerships shape the work?
My research group developed the educational material, but we needed community partners to help put it to use. AI Ready RVA connected the project to its broader work on AI literacy in the Richmond region, and working with the newly formed RITS helped us bring hands-on activities to students. At VCU, Dr. John Fife and the Center for Innovation in STEM Education brought expertise in education research. Margaret Gatongi, a graduate student on Dr. Fife’s team, deserves special credit for developing the surveys and leading the data work. Each partner contributed something we could not have supplied alone.
How has this work influenced your research or teaching, and where might it lead?
The workshops and camp became part of an IRB-approved study of how teachers and students experience AI. One question I keep coming back to is what helps teachers feel prepared to use these tools thoughtfully in their work. Our team has already published an ASEE conference paper using responses from 121 teachers to develop a shorter survey of teachers’ AI knowledge and trust. I hope we can use what we learn from the study to make future programs more useful to the educators and students taking part.
Were students involved, and what did they gain?
Yes. Fifty middle and high school campers took part in the study. At camp, students built custom AI chatbots, worked with Raspberry Pi computers, developed projects using AI and design thinking, and presented their ideas. They also debated the ethics of AI use in school. I think that combination, making something themselves and asking when it should be used, is especially valuable.
VCU students contributed to the research as well. Margaret led the survey and data work, and an undergraduate student helped with research and program coordination.
What else would you like people to know?
The grant supported details that can make a real difference to participation: a free workshop, lunch for teachers, and scholarships for campers. It also gave a new community partnership room to grow and gave us a way to study what people learned from the experience.
That is what I appreciate about community-engaged research: we could offer something useful now and let what we heard from teachers and students guide what we do next.