An AI Edtech Success Story: Students Forge AI Ally, Conquer Space Challenge
The odds seemed long. A small group of Canadian middle school girls aimed for the stars. They accepted the European Space Agency's Astro Pi challenge. Yet, their mentors from Sage Education faced a tight clock. They could meet "...only for 30 minutes a session," a representative recalled. "These sessions were only able to take place every week or so with many gaps in between." Compounding this, "...only one of the students was well acquainted with Python programming, which was essential for the project."
Conventional help would fall short. "It really dawned on us how they needed additional support that we wouldn't be able to give them within the timeframe," the Sage representative shared. The answer was not more hours but smarter tools. They decided to empower the students. The most experienced Python programmers, one from this Canadian cohort and another from a second group involving students from Canada and Portugal were brought together. "We let them craft a mentor," the representative explained. This AI was designed "to help guide the students in their learning outside of the short meetings that we have."
This was no ordinary AI. The students themselves breathed life into their digital guide, Astro-pi-ai, or "Apa," as it became known. Their first act as AI wranglers was vital. "They gathered up all the documentation that was provided by the European space agency and the Astro Pi team," the mentor noted. "They gave this data to the Astro Pi AI...it uses this as a knowledge base." Apa was meticulously programmed. It did not spoon-feed answers. Instead, "...it would provide them with a small titbit of information to try and encourage them to problem solve it." If a student sought more, Apa "...would lead them forward, but follow up with questions to make them think and challenge them to solve the problem on their own." It was a digital Socrates, nudging, not telling.
One of the young architects of Apa, a student who "...didn't use it that much but ... did help create it," shed light on the design. "It was [up to] me and another student, [Rebeca]," he said. "We were both coming up with ideas... and the ideas were for the system prompt." He was responsible for writing them. This core instruction set was elegantly simple: "Use short sentences. Use short phrases. Use 'Vigorous' English. Act like a tutor. You are Astro-pi-ai (Apa). You help students with the Astro Pi challenge. You are friendly and helpful."
He even revealed a secret ingredient, a touch of literary AI lineage. Part of the prompt's direct style — "Use short sentences. Use short phrases. Use 'Vigorous' English" — was inspired. "That's from [an] AI called ‘Hemingway in a Bottle’, which is an AI that my dad created," he explained. This AI, true to its namesake, aimed for clear, forceful prose, a style now subtly embedded in Apa.
The impact was immediate and profound. "They did wonderfully with it," the Sage mentor declared. A significant hurdle for some students was language. "Because they're not native English speakers, going over the documentation and having to look at Python code is sometimes an obstacle," the mentor observed. Apa, "powered by Sage AI is multilingual," seamlessly switched languages. It acted "both as a translator and as a mentor."
The result spoke volumes. The code was completed in record time. More importantly, students who otherwise wouldn't have been quite involved ended up completing code that has now received flight status from the European space agency. Their project, no longer a daunting task, was heading to space!
Faced with limitations, students and mentors did not just cope. They innovated. They built a solution. Young minds, once daunted by complex code and constrained by fleeting minutes, reached for the stars. And, with a little help from their AI friend Apa, they are on their way.