Addressing the NLP in the Classroom: Empowering High School Teachers through Participatory Design of Hands-on NLP Activities

The sudden prevalence of Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems, such as ChatGPT, creates a need for resources to support teachers and students in navigating their use in the classroom. While HCI research has contributed hands-on activities supporting AI literacy, NLP is less explored, and there is a lack of research on how to integrate these tools into teachers' practices. To address this, we conducted an 18-month Participatory Design process with high-school teachers comprising prototyping, workshops, classroom teaching, and dissemination activities. Through this process, we developed and contribute The Engine Room, a public website with novel digital and unplugged NLP activities that are modular and built around customisable datasets. Our findings show how participatory methods can be used to empower teachers in integrating AI literacy activities into their teaching across various subjects and with a sustained impact. We discuss how a participatory approach can address challenges of designing AI literacy tools and activities.