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LIVE Learning Innovations

Agents of ViTAL: Ethics Missions

TEST BACKGROUND

Project at a Glance

Agents of ViTAL: Ethics Missions is a narrative-centered learning environment where students collaboratively investigate the ethical risks and benefits of adopting an AI-powered classroom tool in a fictional school. The system combines perspective-gathering, collaborative decision-making, and an embedded conversational agent, EthicsBot, that supports group ethical reasoning.

Agents of ViTAL | Learning Innovation Description

Agents of ViTAL [Virtual Technology Assessment Laboratory]: Ethics Missions is a browser-based narrative-centered learning environment where middle school students collaboratively evaluate whether/how a fictional school should adopt an AI-powered classroom feedback tool. Students investigate stakeholder perspectives, weigh tradeoffs across three AI ethics dimensions [privacy, bias, and environmental impact], and negotiate to come to group consensus about the most important risks and benefits of the tool through a shared Ranking Challenge interface.

The environment embeds EthicsBot, a conversational agent designed as a thought partner that scaffolds ethical reasoning and collaborative discussion. The project is being iteratively co-designed with middle and high school students, whose feedback shapes the game narrative and EthicsBot’s role, behavior, and guardrails.

Agents of ViTAl

Young students have so much to contribute to meaningful AI ethics conversations, and our work aims to engage them and honor their voices.

Sarah Burriss, PI

Agents of ViTAL | Learning Innovation Impact

Students have been at the center of the design of Agents of ViTAL from the outset, sharing their ideas for characters and missions, playtesting early prototypes, and co-designing the AI-powered agent in the game, EthicsBot. As the game moves into the distribution stage from the design stage, we are excited to share the work these students helped create with broader audiences. The game offers students and teachers an accessible way to learn about AI ethics and supports collaborative conversations around important ethical issues.

Stay tuned for information about how to access the game in your classroom.

Relevant Publications

Burriss, S.K., Zhou, J., Srivastava, N., Phillips, J., Barron, C., Cassell, K., Na, A., Humburg, M., Hu, T., Yang, B., Brady, C., & Molvig, O. [2026]. Agents of ViTAL: Ethics Missions — A Narrative-Centered Learning Environment with a Co-Designed Conversational Agent for Middle School AI Ethics. AIED. Seoul, Korea.

Burriss, S.K., Zhou, J., Phillips, J., Barron, C., Cassell, K., Srivastava, N., Na, A., Humburg, M., Yang, B., Brady, C., & Molvig, O. [2026]. Virtual worlds as ethical laboratories: Exploring the risks and benefits of AI in Agents of ViTAL: Ethics Missions. International Society for the Learning Sciences Annual Meeting. Irvine, CA.

The Team Behind the Work

Sarah Burriss, PI | Vanderbilt University

Jinzhi Zhou | Indiana University

Justin Phillips | North Carolina State University

Courtney Barron | North Carolina State University

Kara B. Cassell | North Carolina State University

Corey Brady | Southern Methodist University

Megan Humburg | Indiana University

Ole Molvig | Vanderbilt University

Namrata Srivastava | Vanderbilt University

Albert Na | Vanderbilt University

Benjamin Yang | Vanderbilt University

Jasmine Guo | Vanderbilt University

Avery Tong | Vanderbilt University