To help close the widening digital divide in some of the nation’s most rural areas, Washington State University (WSU) researchers secured funding from Microsoft, to build tailored road maps to AI integration for small-town school districts.
The financial investment lines up with Microsoft’s broader efforts — including its AI Economy Institute — to ensure the benefits of AI are accessible to all, according to a WSU news release.
WSU assistant professors Tingting Li and Peng He will utilize the $82,500 grant to launch their Rural AI for Societal Equity (RAISE) project, a collaborative framework designed to connect educators, researchers and technology developers around evidence-based, locally grounded AI incorporation strategies, the release said.
“We really want to see how our work can affect teachers’ teaching and students’ learning,” Li said in a statement. “From the systematic level, how can we achieve the goal of responsibly using AI for education? How can we better prepare teachers and students to become the responsible consumer of this new technology?”
The project aims to address what Li described as persistent gaps in guidance for rural teachers adopting AI tools. While urban districts often have clear implementation guidelines and professional communities to rely on, she said teachers in rural districts have less support and a smaller community of fellow educators to draw upon for help.
Earlier phases of their work found a significant divide in AI use across Washington state, particularly in rural areas. With the new funding, Li and He will expand their previous Microsoft-supported AI for Good initiative by conducting workshops; studying teacher-AI interactions; and interviewing administrators, educators and industry partners to determine what support is needed, the release said.
The six-month effort is slated for rural K-12 classrooms across Eastern Washington, North Idaho and Eastern Oregon.
Li emphasized the importance of engaging school communities directly: “Our approach is to always listen to their needs and their ideas first. Then go back to form our research work, then bring our research to them, and collect their feedback.”
Li and He hope their work will ripple beyond the region. They said they want the resulting road map to serve as a model for other states exploring rural-focused AI integration, emphasizing the positive impact of university support and investments from big-tech corporations in reducing digital inequality.
