Co-Designing Community-Centered AI Education for Adults: A Midwestern Case Study
Pith reviewed 2026-06-26 04:02 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
Co-designed AI education for adults shifts concerns from general fears to specific local questions about design and deployment.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
Through a co-designed session developed with community partners, we found that concerns about AI persisted but shifted to specific, locally grounded questions about AI design and deployment. We also discuss AI literacy from a community capacity perspective and argue for AI literacy frameworks grounded in local community contexts that strengthen community capacity.
What carries the argument
The co-designed education session with community partners, which surfaces and refines participant concerns about AI in locally relevant terms.
Load-bearing premise
The single co-designed session with 54 participants produced an authentic, unbiased shift in concerns that can be attributed to the education activity rather than researcher presence, partner influence, or social desirability effects.
What would settle it
A follow-up session in the same community without community partner co-design, with pre- and post-measures of concern specificity, to test whether the shift still occurs.
Figures
read the original abstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) education is increasingly important, yet adults outside higher education receive less attention. We report a case study of an AI education session with 54 adults (48 in-person and 6 virtual) in a predominantly African American community on the east side of a major Midwestern city. We ask: "What does AI education for adults outside formal educational systems look like in practice?" and "What does this AI education session reveal about AI literacy at the community level?" Through a co-designed session developed with community partners, we found that concerns about AI persisted but shifted to specific, locally grounded questions about AI design and deployment. We also discuss AI literacy from a community capacity perspective and argue for AI literacy frameworks grounded in local community contexts that strengthen community capacity.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The manuscript reports a case study of a co-designed AI education session involving 54 adults (48 in-person, 6 virtual) in a predominantly African American Midwestern community. Developed with community partners, the session is presented as revealing that general concerns about AI persisted but shifted toward specific, locally grounded questions about AI design and deployment. The authors discuss AI literacy through a community capacity lens and argue for literacy frameworks that are grounded in local community contexts to strengthen capacity.
Significance. If the observations are robustly supported, the work provides a practical example of participatory AI education for adults outside formal systems, particularly in underrepresented communities. It contributes to HCI by illustrating how co-design can surface context-specific concerns and by advancing the case for community-capacity-oriented AI literacy frameworks, which may inform more equitable educational practices.
major comments (2)
- The abstract states findings about concern shifts and community capacity but supplies no description of data collection, coding, or analysis procedures; without these details the central empirical claims cannot be evaluated against the paper's own evidence.
- The single-session design with 54 participants leaves open whether the reported shift in concerns can be attributed to the education activity itself rather than researcher presence, partner influence, or social desirability effects; a methods section addressing these threats to interpretive validity is needed to support the central claim.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
Thank you for the constructive feedback on our case study manuscript. We appreciate the emphasis on methodological transparency and validity considerations. Below we address each major comment point by point, indicating planned revisions where appropriate.
read point-by-point responses
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Referee: The abstract states findings about concern shifts and community capacity but supplies no description of data collection, coding, or analysis procedures; without these details the central empirical claims cannot be evaluated against the paper's own evidence.
Authors: We agree that the abstract would benefit from a concise description of the data collection and analysis approach to better contextualize the findings. The full manuscript details the co-design process with community partners, the session format, and how concerns were documented through facilitator notes and group discussions. We will revise the abstract to include a brief statement on the qualitative data collection and thematic analysis procedures. revision: yes
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Referee: The single-session design with 54 participants leaves open whether the reported shift in concerns can be attributed to the education activity itself rather than researcher presence, partner influence, or social desirability effects; a methods section addressing these threats to interpretive validity is needed to support the central claim.
Authors: We acknowledge that a single-session case study design limits causal attribution and introduces potential threats such as researcher presence and social desirability. As this work is positioned as an exploratory case study of co-designed education in practice rather than a controlled experiment, we will add a dedicated subsection to the methods describing these threats and our mitigation strategies, including community partner involvement in facilitation and use of open-ended discussion formats. We will also expand the limitations section to discuss implications for interpretive validity. revision: yes
Circularity Check
No significant circularity
full rationale
The paper is a qualitative case study of a single co-designed AI education session with 54 adults. Its claims consist of reported observations about shifts in participant concerns and an interpretive argument for community-capacity-based AI literacy frameworks. No equations, fitted parameters, derivations, predictions, or formal models appear anywhere in the text. The central findings are presented as direct outcomes of the session data rather than reductions of any prior quantities defined by the authors, and no self-citation chains are used to justify load-bearing steps.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
axioms (1)
- domain assumption Participant responses in a co-designed community session can be treated as reliable indicators of authentic local concerns about AI.
Reference graph
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