Moon-Heum Cho and Alexander Corbitt, professors in the Syracuse University School of Education, have been awarded a $50,000 planning grant from the National Science Foundation’s FINDERS Foundry program to develop a game-based digital learning platform that teaches elementary students AI literacy through personal finance decision-making.
The project, Fostering AI Literacy in Elementary Education Through Game-Based Personal Finance Learning: A Community Co-design Approach, will use narrative-driven simulations to help students in grades 3 and 4 understand how AI systems collect data and generate recommendations, applying that understanding to everyday financial scenarios such as saving, budgeting, and comparing options. Students will interact with in-game AI agents that offer recommendations, giving them practice in questioning and evaluating AI-generated input rather than accepting it automatically.
The project takes direct aim at a gap that Cho, an expert in instructional design, and Corbitt, who researches gaming, play, and literacy, see in how AI literacy is currently taught in K-12 schools.
Most existing approaches lean on abstract conceptual explanations or standalone coding exercises, disconnected from the situations where children actually meet AI. Yet elementary-age students are already encountering algorithmically targeted content and personalized recommendations daily, well before any formal instruction catches up to that reality.
By grounding AI literacy in the real-world context of personal finance, the project aims to teach students not just what AI is but when to trust its recommendations, when to question them, and how to make informed decisions on their own.
The project also responds to a pressing need in New York State, where new K-4 personal finance learning standards must be implemented by the 2027-2028 school year. It centers on Central New York’s Fabius-Pompey school district, a rural, high-needs district where broadband access gaps and limited supplemental learning resources make a free, school-based platform especially valuable.
Following the FINDERS Foundry required stakeholder model, the leadership team brings together researchers, a K-12 educator, a technologist, and a parent/guardian representative to co-design the platform alongside students, educators, and families.
Over the two-month planning period, the team will pursue three outcomes: building students’ understanding of how AI systems work, strengthening their grasp of core personal finance concepts, and developing their ability to critically evaluate AI-driven recommendations.
The work will culminate in a full development-phase proposal for November 2026, with an eye toward eventual regional and multi-state expansion through a future NSF Discovery Research PreK-12 proposal.