From the Lab to the Classroom and Beyond: Extending a Game-Based Research Platform for Teaching AI to Diverse Audiences

Recent years have seen increasing interest in AI from outside the AI community. This is partly due to applications based on AI that have been used in real-world domains, for example, the successful deployment of game theory-based decision aids in security domains. This paper describes our teaching approach for introducing the AI concepts underlying security games to diverse audiences. We adapted a game-based research platform that served as a testbed for recent research advances in computational game theory into a set of interactive role-playing games. We guided learners in playing these games as part of our teaching strategy, which also included didactic instruction and interactive exercises on broader AI topics. We describe our experience in applying this teaching approach to diverse audiences, including students of an urban public high school, university undergraduates, and security domain experts who protect wildlife. We evaluate our approach based on results from the games and participant surveys.