Project overview
About AIPLA
AIPLA — Artificial Intelligence in Physics Learning and Assessment — is a three-year research project investigating how generative AI can be integrated meaningfully into upper-secondary physics education in Denmark.
The project is based at the Department of Science Education at the University of Copenhagen, runs from 2026 to 2028, and is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. It is led by Associate Professor Jesper Bruun and developed in close collaboration with Danish physics teachers and Danske Science Gymnasier.
The premise
Generative AI can already answer many conventional physics questions. Students also encounter consumer AI tools outside formal teaching, often without shared expectations about when and how they should be used.
AIPLA therefore starts from classroom practice rather than from the technology alone. It asks when AI can help a student reason, experiment, represent, and communicate more effectively — and when it instead replaces the work through which physics is learned.
Physics makes this question particularly demanding. Knowing physics involves more than producing text or a numerical answer. Students work with mathematical models, graphs, diagrams, experiments, measurements, physical equipment, bodily experience, and evidence-based explanations. A useful AI-supported activity has to respect those relationships.
Project objectives
The project pursues four connected objectives:
- Identify productive tasks. Explore physics tasks that generative AI cannot fully solve but can assist students in completing.
- Design for classroom practice. Investigate how those tasks can be implemented in teaching, learning, and formative or summative assessment.
- Study student development. Examine how students' physics skills, engagement, and attitudes develop when they work with AI-supported activities.
- Develop with teachers. Work with physics teachers as design partners and co-researchers, testing ideas in authentic educational settings.
The aim is not to maximise the amount of AI used in a lesson. It is to develop sound pedagogical practices in which the technology has a clear and limited role.
Method: an iterative ADDIE cycle
AIPLA uses the Analyse, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate model over the three-year project:
Analyse
Researchers examine curriculum requirements, current AI capabilities, existing classroom practices, and teachers' experiences and concerns. This phase identifies both promising uses and important boundaries.
Design
Teachers and researchers turn those findings into activity designs, tutor behaviour, assessment approaches, research instruments, and safeguards. The learning purpose comes before the choice of technology.
Develop
The project develops physics activities, configurable tutors, interactive simulations, virtual laboratories, teacher tools, and evaluation methods. Development is incremental so that each idea can be reviewed before it is used more widely.
Implement
Activities are introduced through teacher workshops, pilot use, and classroom studies. Teachers remain responsible for selecting materials, configuring activities, and deciding what is appropriate for their students.
Evaluate
The project studies how teachers and students use the activities, what forms of interaction occur, what participants experience, and what learning or assessment opportunities emerge. Findings feed into the next cycle.
Intended outputs
AIPLA is expected to produce several kinds of output:
- peer-reviewed research on AI integration, technical capability, and classroom practice;
- practical teaching activities and resources for upper-secondary physics;
- seminars, workshops, and material for the wider physics-teaching community;
- research and evaluation instruments for studying AI-supported learning;
- documentation and reusable software where publication is compatible with institutional, legal, and data-protection requirements; and
- decision support for future hosting and long-term operation of the platform.
What the platform is — and is not
The AIPLA application is a research and teaching environment, not an unrestricted general-purpose chatbot. A teacher prepares a class and activity, chooses the learning goal and source material, and decides which forms of support are available. Students enter through a group code supplied by their teacher.
The platform is one part of the research project. It provides a place to design, deliver, and study activities, but it does not by itself determine the pedagogy or replace professional teacher judgement.
Partners and contact
AIPLA is based at the Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen and works with Danish upper-secondary physics teachers and the national subject community.
The official University of Copenhagen project page is the authoritative source for the formal project description, funding period, and contact details. The university's project announcement provides additional background on the educational motivation and teacher collaboration.
- Content status
- Current
- Maintained by
- AIPLA project team
- Last reviewed