Impact of AIoT education program on digital and AI literacy of elementary school students

The advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution era requires the creation of new value through convergence rather than piecemeal use of technology. In that sense, the convergence of AI’s learning ability and IoT connectivity makes it possible to build a more intelligent and automated system. Therefore, AI education in preparation for the era of hyper-convergence and hyper-connectivity should not stop at just experiencing artificial intelligence technology and understanding its principles, but should move toward experiencing a more expanded world. Accordingly, major countries around the world believe that young learners need the ability to naturally access and handle the latest technology, and are actively taking the lead in information education, including AI education, from kindergarten to elementary and middle school. Accordingly, this researcher believed that for elementary school students who fall into the specific operational stage of Piaget’s cognitive development theory, AIoT education is necessary as AI convergence education that creates specific outputs in connection with real life. To this end, we developed an AIoT education program (12 topics, 24 sessions in total) using DIYGO, which can implement IoT robots using various input/output sensors and CPU boards. Among these, considering the students’ level and interest, the contents of the 12th session on 6 topics were applied to an experimental class of 6th grade elementary school students (24 students), and effectiveness was verified through pre- and post-paired sample t-tests. The measurement tools used to verify the effectiveness of this study are the AI literacy test tool developed by Kim (Effect of PBL-based AI convergence education programs on AI literacy and creative problem-solving skills of elementary school students, 2023) and the digital literacy test tool developed by Lee et al. (2021). The test sheet questions were reorganized focusing on questions on areas related to the learning elements covered in the AIoT education program. In addition, exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis were conducted to verify the validity and reliability of the measurement tool used in this study, and the results showed a relatively good reliability level of over 0.6. When AIoT education using DIYGO was conducted, the pre- and post-difference test results of students’ digital literacy showed statistically significant improvements in all detailed areas of digital literacy. Additionally, the difference verification results for AI literacy showed that it was effective in all detailed areas. Based on the above results, first, at a time when digital and AI literacy is becoming important, AIoT education can be an effective method for cultivating digital and AI literacy in future talent. Second, AIoT education shows the potential as a form of AI convergence education that is integrated with life and solving real-life problems.