Kick-off project ‘Adaptive course materials for LDD students’

09 September 2024 News item

Standard education in the Netherlands is becoming more and more inclusive. This means that students from diverse backgrounds and with different needs increasingly learn together. Manual personalisation of all the course materials to account for language development disorders is time-consuming for teachers. A smart solution is therefore necessary! On Wednesday, September 4th, Koninklijke Auris Groep, University of Twente, and Gynzy launched their collaboration.

Creating course materials that match the needs of students with a language development disorder (LDD) is a complex task. “Most regular methods that are in use in education do not match these specific needs,” project leader Wendy Voorn says. She is innovation advisor at Koninklijke Auris Groep (Auris). Auris is an expert organisation in the field of speech, language, and hearing disorders, offering (tailored) education, education assistance, specialised care, and treatments. “These children benefit from repetition, simplification, and visual support. This is implemented manually by our teachers and such adjustments cost a lot of time.”

Adaptive

The tool that is being developed by the co-creation team, based on Large Language Models, adapts the course materials to suit the student’s language level better. This gives the teacher more time to actually cover the teaching materials. Wendy explains: “We currently guide 2,500 LDD students in special education, and almost 4,000 in regular education. In the latter case the students are spread across various locations, which makes counselling extra challenging. The workload in education is already rather high and adaptive course materials are the ideal solution to alleviate teachers’ workload.

Kick-off co-creatieteam Adaptief lesmateriaal TOS.

Meeting

NOLAI co-creation manager Marjolein Geerts had the honour to open the meeting. After her introduction, the team could get to know each other better. “It was very fun and inspiring to meet each other. Unfortunately, we couldn’t all be there in person and some project members therefore joined us online,” Marjolein says. “For some it was their first meeting, for others it was good to start thinking together again. We found out that we also need speech therapists for this project, and soon we will start interviews at schools with these professionals. Furthermore, we discussed which learning goals we will strive for within the world studies course in groups 5 and 6. It’s wonderful to see how involved team members are during such a meeting, which causes great insights and ideas to arise.”

‘Everything comes together’

Wendy is looking forward to the collaboration within this project. “The diversity is really fun, especially because of the triangle of education, science, and corporate life. Auris’ innovation team frequently works with scientific partners, and it is also great to be able to work together with developer Gynzy. It means we can use their expertise to test this project thoroughly, and it is great to take the implementation directly where it belongs: the students.”

Professor Bernard Veldkamp of the Universiteit Twente is involved as scientific project leader and Gynzy’s operational director Koen Geluk advises the co-creation team. He adds: “At Gynzy, we’re in direct contact with the teachers to help them with our software. This project is unique due to the fact that we bring digital possibilities, supported by science, into practice immediately. Everything comes together in this project. I look forward to bring our solution to this specific target group.”

‘Playing into everyone’s strengths’

Playing into everyone’s strengths, that is an important goal for Auris. “I look forward to let the partners meet the target group,” Wendy says. “It’s important and at the same time a challenge to get to know these remarkable children. It does not only make you aware of LDDs, but you also get to understand them. It means that there is an intrinsic motivation to find a solution.

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Organizational unit: National Education Lab AI (NOLAI)