Enhancing AI Literacy and Resilience through Intergenerational Digital Storytelling among Older Adults

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are rapidly reshaping daily life; yet older adults--one of the fastest-growing U.S. demographics--have limited chances to understand, critique, and influence AI technologies. Meanwhile, older adults bring a wealth of life experience, and a willingness to share knowledge across generations. Their shared experience and knowledge can have a great impact on human and technology advances. This project aims to address this gap by designing, developing, and evaluating StoryBridge, a web-based intergenerational digital-storytelling platform that enables dyads of older adults and youths to co-create multimedia narratives about how AI affects community life. By embedding AI-literacy concepts in life stories and fostering dialogues across generations, the project seeks to strengthen AI literacy, social connectedness, and resilience among older adults while cultivating responsible AI awareness in youth, and thus, to promote the progress of science and serve the national interest.

Through multiple focus groups and participatory-design sessions with older adults, youths, and community partners, the team will co-design StoryBridge that supports intergenerational digital storytelling for AI literacy. The project is guided by three research questions: 1) How can intergenerational storytelling enhance older adults' AI literacy? 2) In what ways does collaborative storytelling impact social connectedness and resilience in older adults and responsible AI awareness in youths? 3) How do platform design features influence participants' engagement and learning outcomes? The project employs a mixed-methods approach to investigate these questions with 50 dyads of older adults and youths. Quantitative data from surveys and user activities as well as qualitative data from in-depth interviews will be analyzed to assess the acceptability, feasibility and efficacy of the platform. Some specific designs of the platform include: 1) idea cards rooted in local traditions, community events, and everyday scenarios narratives; 2) an ""AI Whisper"" widget that offers plain-language tooltips or audio snippets that demystify how the system interprets prompts; 3) multimodal input and output, which enables oral stories automatically transcribed and read aloud by text-to-speech, and enables participants with vision, typing, or connectivity constraints to shape rich content; 4) a reflective toolbox that preserves version histories and provides prompts to guide pairs to discuss conceptual understanding, practical use, evaluation, and ethical questions. This project is a pioneer in documenting intergenerational narratives teaching AI concepts to older adults and lays the groundwork for future research in intergenerational learning to enhance AI literacy.

This AISL Integrating Research and Practice (Project Type 4) project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing everyone multiple pathways for accessing and engaging in STEM learning experiences. This project is co-funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.