On June 13, 2022, the first "field trial", a teacher training course on "Access to artificial intelligence and data literacy in computer science classes" took place at the Freie Universität Berlin. Within the TrainDL project, training modules for teachers are being tested in which they are introduced to approaches for teaching data and AI skills. These training courses are evaluated and the results fed into the cyclical project work with stakeholders from the education system. In the long term, recommendations are to be developed from this on how the topics of AI and data competence can be implemented in the curricular requirements of all EU countries.

A total of 24 computer science teachers took part in this first workshop, including five trainee teachers. The training was led by Viktoriya Olari and Uwe Lorenz from the Freie Universität Berlin.

Today, students interact with AI-based applications on a daily basis and share their data, consciously and unconsciously. In order to promote data and AI competences in school education, it is necessary for teachers to have an understanding of basic informatics concepts and data literacy. Therefore, the aim of the event was to provide the participating teachers with approaches for teaching competences in the subject areas of AI and data literacy. For this purpose, they were presented with approved approaches and teaching materials, which they were then able to test themselves.

In the course of the workshop, the participants were introduced to the basic functioning of various methods of artificial intelligence. They were shown how the modelling of real data sets with a data analysis tool works and they discovered machine learning methods to process the data sets and gain new information. They also obtained insights into further perspectives on how to teach AI and data literacy in computer science classes in a sound way, as well as teaching materials.

The entire workshop was evaluated by TrainDL project partner University of Potsdam. This project partner also conducted extensive interviews with some of the teachers after the training. Both in the interviews and in the feedback provided by the participants in the questionnaires, the teachers reported that the event was extremely enriching and could be repeated in a similar format. In the next phases of the project, the results of the evaluation will be used to optimize and adapt the training for teachers of other subjects and school levels. The results will then be processed and communicated to education policy and the general public in order to promote the structural and content-related integration of AI and data competence in teacher and school education across the EU and in a sustainable manner.