Department of Computer Science and Technology
Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available for 2 years.
We are seeking to appoint a full-time Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) to lead the design, evaluation and deployment of an AI-powered tutor within the Isaac Science and Ada Computer Science online learning platforms. This is an exciting position within a well-established and successful online STEM education project and a chance to make an immediate real-world impact with your work in this fast-developing and exciting new area in the education sector.
Isaac Science, developed by the University of Cambridge, and Ada Computer Science, developed in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, use modern web technologies and evidence-based educational approaches to improve STEM education. The platform provides online learning resources to improve physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology and computer science teaching to students aged 11-18 and is used extensively by schools across the UK and internationally. The platform currently supports hundreds of thousands of students and teachers and receives millions of question attempts each month.
The successful candidate will lead a major new initiative to develop a Socratic AI tutor capable of providing high quality, pedagogically informed support to learners as they work through questions on the platform. The AI tutor will be designed to guide student thinking through hints, prompts and explanations while deliberately avoiding the disclosure of complete answers. The objective is to enhance learning, develop student understanding and strengthen problem solving approaches.
The work will include a review of existing AI tutoring and AI-assisted learning systems, including commercial products and research prototypes. The successful candidate will work alongside our dedicated software engineering team to design and implement a prototype AI tutor as well as collaborate with our content and education teams where they will undertake trials with partner schools, evaluate learning outcomes and user experiences, and contribute to the deployment of successful approaches at scale across Isaac Science and Ada Computer Science.