A Review of Digital Learning Environments for Teaching Natural Language Processing in K-12 Education

To ensure that citizens, including young people, become responsible users and creators of intelligent solutions, there has been increasing attention towards incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) curricula, including NLP, into 21st century computing education [11, 46, 54]. Children are growing up with NLP-powered applications, making them ideal learning platforms. For example, conversational agents have been demonstrated to enhance engagement in reading [57], foster language learning [16, 56] and promote story comprehension and engagement [55]. Despite the prevalence of NLP in young people's lives, there is limited research on teaching them NLP concepts. Traditionally, AI and NLP concepts have been taught primarily in higher education [3, 32, 40]. However, research indicates that children are capable of grasping AI and NLP concepts from a young age [10, 20].