With so many schools closing because of the coronavirus, your children may now be staying at home with you and you have to make sure their education continues. Here are five tips to help your children continue their education at home.
Your child will need a place where she could focus on her lessons or activities. This could be the child’s room or a part of the living room. And if the school offers online lessons, the computer should be accessible to her and you as the facilitating adult. Her other school material within reach, as well, or stored in an easily-movable case so the child can take them wherever she feels comfortable studying.
3. Have a Realistic Schedule
While you’re not expected to recreate your child’s classroom in your home, it would do her good to maintain the schedule structure that she is used to when she was going to school. It would give her a sense of routine, of her doing school except that it’s at home. But if you observe that your child learns better at a different time of the day, adjust the schedule accordingly. The goal, after all, is for your child to continue learning, not to maintain school schedules.
4. Be a Facilitator
You don’t have to be your child’s teacher. If your child’s school has shifted to a home-based learning system with online classes, you will act more like a facilitator or teacher’s aide. Just follow the program but be ready to answer any questions that your child may ask.
If you were homeschooling your child even before the coronavirus pandemic, you are the still primary teacher. But now, you have to find ways to fill the gaps left by tours, music lessons, sports clubs, and other out-of-the-house learning activities that are now cancelled. For this, the internet is your friend. Look for virtual tours, documentaries, demo videos, and other learning media that you can use.
5. You Don’t Need to Study the Whole Day
Limit dedicated schooling time. Allow for some free time for your children to stretch their minds and bodies in more leisurely activities, or just relax. Let them play with their toys or draw what they want to draw, or do whatever they find enjoyable. If they miss their friends, set up an online meeting for them. You can also do the same for yourself and your friends.
Just because school premises are closed doesn’t mean learning has to stop. Make the most of what you have and what the schools offer to keep your children learning.
W NUADU udostępniliśmy tysiące interaktywnych zadań i materiały do samodzielnej nauki dla uczniów klas IV – VIII. Na komputerze, w telefonie i tablecie.
Dla każdego przedmiotu przygotowaliśmy materiały edukacyjne i zadania do rozwiązywania, które same się sprawdzają. Wszystkie materiały zgodne są z podstawą programową Ministerstwa Edukacji Narodowej.
Dotychczas materiały, zadania oraz funkcjonalności takie jak natychmiastowe wyniki, czy obserwowanie postępów w nauce dostępne były wyłącznie dla szkół współpracujących z NUADU. Po raz pierwszy udostępniliśmy je do indywidualnego wykorzystania! Będą pomocą dla dzieci, które kontynuują naukę w domu. Z NUADU mogą uczyć się samodzielnie, bez pomocy nauczyciela. Z materiałów skorzystają również korepetytorzy, centra korepetycyjne lub inne mniejsze jednostki edukacyjne.
W każdej klasie:
Tysiące interaktywnych zadań
Automatycznie sprawdzane wyniki
Bogata baza wiedzy
Dostęp na smartfonie i w komputerze
Materiały zgodne z podstawą programową MEN
Interaktywne materiały do samodzielnej nauki NUADU – klasa VI
Interaktywne materiały do samodzielnej nauki NUADU – klasa V
Interaktywne materiały do samodzielnej nauki NUADU – klasa VI
Interaktywne materiały do samodzielnej nauki NUADU – klasa VII
Interaktywne materiały do samodzielnej nauki NUADU – klasa VIII
Szczegóły programowe dla każdej klasy znajdują się na stronie uczen.nuadu.pl!
Aby zakupić materiały należy zarejestrować konto w NUADU i wybrać swoją klasę w zakładce „Sklep”.
Do końca sierpnia trwa promocja. Dostęp do materiałów wybranej klasy na okres 12 miesięcy kosztuje teraz połowę regularnej ceny czyli 59 zł.
Oferujemy 100% rabat dla dzieci pracowników służb medycznych!
As COVID-19 continues to spread and cities go into quarantine, more schools have been forced to close. These closures may go on for weeks, even months.
How can teachers and school administrators step up to the challenge?
Thanks to the internet and collaborative software, teachers can still conduct lessons online.
Teachers can set up virtual classrooms with teamwork hubs like Microsoft Teams, which is available for free to educational institutions. Using this tool, teachers can show PowerPoint presentations, use a digital whiteboard in real-time, and share links to the best online supporting sources.
Here are some tips that will help you get the best results from distance learning tools:
Record lectures instead of streaming
Show your face for a personal touch
Limit each lesson 15 minutes or less
Test if slides are mobile-friendly
Use existing open-access resources
Give specific and detailed instructions
Provide interactive activities
Make sure all content and navigation are accessible using the keyboard alone
Set reasonable expectations
Use auto-checking to measure participation
Use group communications carefully
Let students take control of certain activities
Don’t forget to express sympathy and encouragement to both students and their parents, who often oversee the online lessons at home. These are trying times, but we can still maintain connection even while practicing social distancing.
Interested to start home education with online tools? NUADU, in partnership with Microsoft, can help you set up a virtual classroom.
As stated in the Special Report on the Cooperation of Business and Education in Poland, employers [1] consider teamwork skills to be absolutely vital in the workplace. Therefore, developing teamwork among pupils helps in their careers.
Managers are mindful that these so-called soft skills can determine the success or failure of any project:
collaboration to achieve group goals
receptiveness to suggestions
giving and accepting feedback
motivating others
problem-solving with a team
However, these qualities are not innate; they are acquired over years of experience.
An Educational Paradigm Shift
The previous model of education in Poland focused on individual work at school and at home, which provides few opportunities to master soft skills. Consequently, young people only begin to develop crucial skills and attitudes in their first job.
Fortunately, there has been a paradigm shift toward a more collaborative approach in schools. Currently, pupils have more opportunities for projects where each child’s input contributes to the final grade.
They soon learn that success requires the involvement of everyone. Instead of looking for someone to blame, the group focuses their time on seeking solutions. In the process, they practice and learn valuable skills that prove valuable in professional settings.
Technology-Supported Collaboration and teamwork among pupils
NUADU is a platform that supports the educational process through an objective evaluation of the learning outcomes achieved. Our team develops solutions that not only contribute to the acquisition of knowledge but also help shape the desired professional attitudes.
NUADU allows teachers to identify the abilities of individual pupils, which equips them to make the right decisions when choosing pupils to work on a group project together.
Michał Korpys, Head of Product at NUADU
NUADU educational platform encourages Cooperation and Teamwork among pupils
NUADU is a convenient solution designed to help teachers support individual students and analyse their progress, despite the limited time available. This system tracks and compares learning styles, results, and motivational characteristics (determined by psychophysiological factors).
The NUADU platform is highly accurate and founded on the latest breakthroughs in pedagogy, neurobiology, and psychology. Plus, the advanced technology used to process educational data allows the best designation of specific tutor–pupil pairs. Thus, NUADU is uniquely positioned to promote the changes taking place in Polish schools.
“A perfect tool that facilitates work with the students to an enormous extent.”
District Mayor of Warsaw
“We started working with NUADU two years ago and this is one of the best platforms we have had the opportunity to work with.”
Headmaster of the School Complex No. 1 Pelplin
“The platform is complementary to the learning process during the lesson and, for the pupils, it constitutes an excellent form of consolidating knowledge at home and using information technology. The platform makes it possible to motivate pupils to study regularly and reduces the time teachers need to give homework assignments.”
Principal of Primary School No. 114 Warsaw
“NUADU makes checking a given assignment an automatic process, whereby the teacher gets the data on how well the students perform in each subject as well as the gaps in their knowledge. The conclusions drawn from conversations with the teachers are clear.”
Head of the Department of Education Targówek District, Warsaw
“I have been using the NUADU platform for two years now. Thanks to this solution, eager students can not only consolidate their processed material into class work but can also expand their knowledge of the content that was not discussed during the lesson. Students are eager to benefit from this form of knowledge acquisition, as it is attractive and meshes with gratification in the form of good grades.”
Head of the Department of Education Targówek District, Warsaw
“It is a faster way of learning, and much easier to comprehend than books. It is more fun than just sitting with a sheet of paper and a pencil.”
Teacher of Mathematics at the Primary School No. 378 Warsaw
“Our students lacked the motivation to do their homework, but this situation changed when the history teacher decided to use the NUADU platform. Students perform their assignments willingly, and they can evaluate their work. They are not afraid of ridicule from their peers, their knowledge of the subject is up to date, and it is adapted to their age and potential.”
Primary School Principal Komarow
“NUADU attracts a great deal of interest from the teachers and students of our school because it reduces the time that teachers need to prepare and check students’ tests of varying length, as well as their homework assignments, and students are becoming increasingly willing to do their homework . . . This educational platform is worth recommending to every school.”
Principal of School Complex No. 1 Mysłowice
“Assigning homework or short tests on the NUADU educational platform is an excellent way of supplementing regular paper homework . . . From the teacher’s perspective, it is good to choose exercises from the question bank of tasks with various difficulty levels.”
Teacher, Hotel Industry School Gdańsk
“Thanks to NUADU, teachers can quickly and accurately detect any gap in a pupil’s knowledge while providing the opportunity for additional development. The simple, friendly interface and attractive design make it easier for pupils to do their homework, which, in turn, results in more regular studies and improves the results.”
Grzegorz Szczuka, Director of the Department of Social Development Gdańsk
“The definite advantage of the system was the way it operated, as well as the orderly process of creating and generating homework assignments . . . The system’s adaptability was another benefit. Schoolchildren could log in to access the platform and do their homework at any time. Additionally, each student could pause and then resume their homework later. It was also possible to access it from a mobile phone or any device with access to the Internet, and not just a network machine.”
NUADU together with the American organization SEL for Prevention (Social and Emotional Learning) provide an educational program and digital technology enabling students aged 5-14 to develop important life skills.
Why manage emotions and social skills?
Preventative programs help to develop skills that allow students to cope better on a daily basis and live a fuller, more fruitful life. The SEL for Prevention program can help reduce risk factors associated with self-destructive and aggressive behavior, and has shown positive results including academic performance, reduced stress, improved attitudes and behavior, and better functioning in society, school and professional environments.
A program with passion
SEL for Prevention is an evidence-based social and emotional learning program that covers a wide range of ages and proficiency levels. The program was created by Pamela Goldberg, a child therapist and former critical care nurse with a passion for prevention. As a licensed therapist for marriages and families, she realized that strong physical health begins with the development of strong mental health. This led her to create effective tools and strategies to promote positive mental health for students and schools.
8 steps to success
The SEL for Prevention program includes 8 basic social and emotional areas, within which it provides knowledge, skills and strategies designed to promote the healthy interaction and safe regulation of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
These 8 concepts, called steps, are:
Peer Connections
Identifying & Expressing Feelings
Respecting Boundaries
Building Empathy
Mood Control
Stopping Manipulation
Self-Regulation
Motivation
The SEL program is easily adaptable and can be taught as an independent course or integrated with the appropriate curriculum. The program uses research-based social and emotional learning curriculum that uses educational tools as well as storytelling, art, drama classes, music and intimate discussions in order to create an organic learning experience for children and equip them with strategies to keep them safe.
Technology that supports the learning of life skills
Pupils require access to curricula that are innovative, engaging and entertaining, and based on research.
Pamela M. Goldberg, founder of SEL for Prevention
NUADU’s innovative technology perfectly supports Ms. Goldberg’s mission, and our team has successfully digitized nearly 700 tasks, 130 presentations, and 32 lessons.
Transitioning to a digital environment not only saves teachers’ time in preparing materials for classes, but also encourages children to learn. Parents are also included in the teaching process, as they have access to the system, receive notifications about their child’s activities, as well as specific messages prepared for parents to support the emotional and social development of their child. The platform supports all forms of formative and summative evaluation in order to minimize the time spent by the teacher on paperwork, evaluation and assessment. This allows teachers to make the most of their valuable time, to better plan their lessons, and support their students.
Personalize learning by grouping students in targeted ways
The NUADU solution together with SEL for Prevention content can be used as a prevention among all children or intervention in selected groups. Including all children in the program does not exclude an individual approach to each student. The key advantage of the adaptive NUADU algorithm is the automatic adjustment of the content to the level of knowledge and skill of the students. The system identifies gaps in the area of a given SEL area and proposes activities that can raise competency levels. The system also provides individual feedback during assessment, which increases motivation to learn. Teachers can similarly conduct classes in NUADU only for selected students, dividing them according to their specific needs.
A solution for 500 schools in the United States
Cooperation with SEL for Prevention was initiated thanks to Global Grid for Learning, an organization that enables school environments to implement innovative technologies to improve education. Thanks to the joint project, 500 schools in America under the grant will benefit from the NUADU platform in the next 3 years.
The NUADU Content Department is currently working hard to digitize thousands of pieces of educational content from renowned publishers around the world. Their high efficiency makes projects such as Global Grid for Learning possible.
There are 48 students in the average Chinese classroom, 35 in Singapore, 24 in the United States, and 20 in Australia and Europe (Rampell, 2009). Teachers typically have at least a few classes, and in some cases, when teachers work at more than one school, they may have up to a dozen of them. In extreme cases this can quickly escalate to a teacher being responsible for the education of 300-350 students.
It’s important to recognize that this student group will come from a diverse range of backgrounds, all with different learning, mental and physical abilities. Every student has unique needs, particularly concerning how they are taught and treated in the classroom.
So, what exactly does the teaching process look like? It’s safe to say there are multiple elements: planning lessons, doing the actual teaching and explaining of new topics, assigning practical exercises, evaluation (the more frequent, the better), as well as providing compensatory tasks, and a host of other daily activities. It’s not difficult to assume that the time needed to provide students with sufficient individual attention, on top of an already busy schedule, could be calculated in centuries – not working hours.
Educational research has shown a significant relationship between class-size and student achievement. In fact, it has been known for some time that there are major benefits from reduced class-sizes: “a student who would score at about the 83rd percentile when taught individually would score at about the 50th percentile when taught in a class of 40 pupils”, and the difference in being taught in a class of 20 versus a class of 40 is an advantage of 6 percentile ranks (Glass & Smith, 1979).
Class-size and personalized attention to learning is vital for students to reach their potential, which is where NUADU comes in.
An innovative solution for education
Our team of enthusiasts at NUADU is working hard to develop an effective solution that addresses the challenges of the most complex problems in education, and how we can successfully incorporate this solution into the current education system.
Education is not able to change rapidly. If we want schools to develop, we must create innovations that can be easily incorporated into the daily lives of teachers and students. If we expect people to change their habits overnight, we’ll condemn them to their great resistance in advance.
Alina Guzik, Director of Product and Innovation, NUADU
This approach has become the nucleus to develop a powerful solution that will be able to help teachers recognize the individual needs of each student, and provide them with materials and appropriate educational support, exactly when they need it. A solution that can be applied equally in schools and at home.
After all, effective learning is not only about suitable materials and time spent memorizing it. The whole process consists of many lifestyle factors such as sleep, stress, the time of day, and the place we learn.
NUADU has taken these factors into account and has a holistic approach to our solution. Our employees were the first in the world to embed a technological solution with discoveries in the fields of pedagogy, neurobiology and psychology. While our product utilizes artificial intelligence mechanisms and machine learning, we understand the importance of factoring in the logistics of being a human – and the diverse effects this can have on creating an effective learning solution.
NUADU’s innovative solution has been recognized by government institutions and is fortunate to have received funding of more than half a million euros from the National Center for Research and Development in Poland.
A multidisciplinary team consisting of scientists (from various fields), data analysts, high-level machine learning programmers, and UX designers is working on the creation of the solution. The whole process also involves consultation with students and teachers at every stage.
Intelligent educational planner
The developed product will distribute learning materials in advance, taking into account the specific needs of the student. It will lay out the work so that the student can easily familiarize themselves with it, learn, and consolidate knowledge well in advance of the indicated due date, e.g. before an assignment or exam.
Improving how we retain information
When we have a lot of material to master, the main problem is quickly forgetting what we have already learned. The NUADU project will create an intelligent mechanism that will help transfer knowledge from short-term to long-term memory. For this to work, the Ebbinghaus forgetful curve will be used, indicating periods exposed to loss of knowledge, as well as the Leitner system – an algorithm defining a five-stage process of repetition of contents, until their complete assimilation. In contrast to existing products based on algorithms which are based on a rigid set of rules, NUADU will take into account the unique needs of specific people. Their recognition and personalization will be supported by artificial intelligence.
Encouraging students to work together
So, what if a student has difficulty understanding a topic? The system will provide relevant material in the form of text, videos and presentations, or suggest a peer who could help them learn. In a world where teachers have limited time to support each child, the importance of inter-student connection can help dramatically. This could also encourage students to help each other learn and share knowledge.
A bot that motivates you to learn
Creating a product based on science is often a long, tedious and difficult process. Perseverance and regularity in learning is a problem for many adults, let alone children. Fortunately, motivation can help, which is why the NUADU system will reward students, for example, for the time they spend actively learning or gaining new skills. This will be supported by a virtual bot that will encourage students to work, improve their weaker skills and support them on their journey to achieve their goals. The bot will also suggest the use of various methods and learning techniques that will support building something precious – self-awareness.
Commercialization
In 2019 we aim to implement our innovative product in Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, the United States and Poland. The system, thanks to its modular construction, will be used by schools including primary and secondary, tutoring centers, and universities, but also suited for time spent learning at home – whether it be studying to improve their grade or prepare for an exam.
Marcin Wojnowski, President and founder of NUADU
NUADU recognized as a global leader in EdTech
At the end of the last year, NUADU was selected as one of five companies out of 300, from 34 different countries, in the Incredibles Program, which supports innovative companies across the globe. The organization also received an award from the Polish Investment and Trade Agency for dynamism in international expansion.
Moreover, the recently published report ‘Map of the Polish AI’ indicated NUADU as one of four companies changing the structure of world education. Microsoft has also shown it believes in the company, by promoting the NUADU educational platform as part of the Schools of the Future project – an initiative that is transforming education around the world.
Sources:
Rampell, C. 2009, ‘Class Size Around the World’, Economix, New York Times, https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/class-size-around-the-world/
Glass & Smith, 1979, ‘Meta-Analysis of Research on the Relationship of Class-Size and Achievement’, ED 168, 129, Laboratory of Educational Research, University of Colorado
Authors
Alina Guzik Director of Product and Innovation NUADU
Poproszono nas o wypowiedź do artykułu BRANŻA EDTECH W 2019 ROKU: PROGNOZY EKSPERTÓW I ZAŁOŻYCIELI FIRM Z CAŁEGO ŚWIATA, który ukazał się niedawno w serwisie news.elearninginside.com. Oto nasza część tej publikacji:
Cyfrowe narzędzia oceny dostarczają nam już ram i danych, które, przekazane do systemów kształcenia, ułatwiają zdobywanie wiedzy i jej ocenę w szkołach, domach i centrach edukacyjnych.
Michał Korpys, Dyrektor Produktu w NUADU
Prognoza NUADU dla branży EdTech na rok 2019
Michał Korpys jest współzałożycielem NUADU, opartej na sztucznej inteligencji platformy, która zmienia sposób, w jaki uczniowie osiągają cele edukacyjne, a nauczyciele przydzielają i oceniają zadania. W 2019 roku Korpys spodziewa się rosnącego wpływu obiektywnych danych w adaptywnej edukacji – i to według niego będzie ewolucyjne rozszerzenie procesu cyfrowej oceny ucznia. Liczy, że dzięki tej zmianie nauczyciele będą mogli poświęcać więcej czasu na to, co potrafią najlepiej: na wsparcie uczniów w osiąganiu celów edukacyjnych.
Prognoza NUADU dla branży EdTech na rok 2019
– Cyfrowe narzędzia oceny dostarczają nam już ram i danych, które, przekazane do systemów kształcenia, ułatwiają przyswajanie wiedzy i jej ocenę w szkołach, domach i centrach edukacyjnych – mówi Korpys. – Dojdziemy w końcu do momentu, w którym proces edukacji zacznie przebiegać płynnie. Nauczyciele będą dobrze wykorzystywać czas spędzany z uczniami, a uczniowie będą dobrze wykorzystywać czas poświęcany na zdobywanie wiedzy w najskuteczniejszy możliwy sposób. Systemy, które za tym wszystkim stoją, też będą działać optymalnie, zapewniając cyfrowe wsparcie edukacji adaptywnej i administracyjnej papierkowej roboty.
Prognoza NUADU dla branży EdTech na rok 2019
Nie są to jednak jedyne prognozy Michała Korpysa na 2019 rok.
– W 2019 roku ludzie będą też bardziej otwarci na spersonalizowane ścieżki nauczania wykorzystujące sztuczną inteligencję – mówi Korpys. – Jeśli chodzi o samodzielną naukę, nic nie przebije dobrego nauczyciela albo prostego cyfrowego narzędzia, które będzie nam towarzyszyć, przewidywać naszą ścieżkę nauczania i dopasowywać ją w czasie rzeczywistym do naszych celów edukacyjnych.
Korpys podkreśla, że aby tak się stało, interakcje na linii człowiek-komputer muszą rozwijać się i stawać coraz bardziej złożone. Wierzy, że to właśnie nastąpi w nadchodzącym roku.
Prognoza NUADU dla branży EdTech na rok 2019
Na koniec, Michał Korpys ma nadzieję, że w 2019 roku będziemy poświęcać coraz więcej uwagi umiejętnościom miękkim:
– Świat bardzo tego potrzebuje, a my musimy zacząć tworzyć nową kulturę, której podstawą będzie dążenie do doskonałości w tej dziedzinie. Zrównoważony rozwój: ekologia, recykling, walka z plastikiem – to wszystko jest częścią powstającego paradygmatu, w którym rozwiązania złożonych problemów wynikają z empatii, są oparte o analizę danych i powstają dzięki innowacjom.
We were asked to provide the input for the article EDTECH IN 2019: EXPERTS AND FOUNDERS AROUND THE WORLD SHARE PREDICTIONS, recently published by news.elearninginside.com. Here is our part:
Digital assessment tools already provide us with the data and framework to feed it back to learning systems to facilitate knowledge acquisition and evaluation in schools, homes, and learning centers.
“Digital assessment tools already provide us with the data and framework to feed it back to learning systems to facilitate knowledge acquisition and evaluation in schools, homes, and learning centers,” observes Korpys, “Eventually we’ll get to the point of ‘smooth education,’ where teachers have quality time teaching students, students have quality time learning in the most efficient way, and the systems running underneath have quality time as well; performing their tasks, deep within within the digital realm of adaptive learning support and dungeons of paperwork administration.” But these are not Korpys’s only predictions for the 2019.
“In 2019,” says Korpys, “I also see people growing more open to AI-led personalized learning paths. When it comes to self-study, nothing can beat a good teacher, or a simple digital companion that is able to predict your learning path and adjust it to your learning goals in real-time.” But for this to work, Korpys emphasizes, the complexity of human-machine interactions needs to keep growing. He’s optimistic this will continue to happen in 2019.
Finally, Korpys is hopeful that in 2019, we will also increasingly turn our attention to soft skills: “The world needs it badly and we need to build a new culture based on excellence in that. Sustainable development: ecology, recycling, plastic war–all that is part of the emerging paradigm where solutions to complex problems are animated by empathy, based on big data analysis, and solved by innovations.”
Adaptive learning and machine learning are not techniques that have emerged over the last few years with the spreading of computers and smartphones. The beginnings date back to the 1960s and Arthur Samuel from IBM, who developed the first chess training program.
But if we take a look at the wider definition of adaptive learning with the technology section excluded, adaptive learning being an educational system that analyzes students’ performance in real time and modifies teaching methods based on these data, we will notice that there is nothing radically new about it. In fact, it describes the very kind of work that a teacher performs or should perform when working with students. In such a system, the teachers apply their intuition, professional experience and knowledge of the students. The pedagogue’s experience will always have a huge impact on the child’s educational success; however, on the one hand it will be only based on the teacher’s personal abilities, and, on the other hand, is time-consuming and difficult to implement in the classical (school-paper-based) learning model. Only the use of technology may enable its wider use.
At the moment, we can find many products that offer adaptations to the individual abilities of the student. The most-used solution is tailored to their abilities and skills by proposing individual learning paths for students. We can group them into several types:
Students create paths manually
In products of this type, a student who wants to master the subject they is interested in has ready access to all materials and selects relevant fragments relying on their own knowledge of what they wants to learn, thus creating a personalized learning path on their very own. This solution allows the student full personalization of the learning paths because they choose only those things which seem important and necessary.
The obvious disadvantage of this solution is that it only offers partial knowledge if a given student works individually, without consulting a teacher or a tutor. In addition, not many students are fully aware of their educational needs and how to compose their own learning path. Therefore, an alternative solution is to engage the teacher.
Teachers create paths manually
In this product type, the teacher manually creates individualized paths for individual students or groups of students, deciding which exercises they should do as well as the level of difficulty or what presentation materials they should familiarize themselves with, and in what order.
This method, despite being very beneficial from a didactic point of view, nonetheless implies a huge amount of work and time on behalf of the teacher. Although grouping students with specific abilities and skills together allows to save a certain amount of time, such grouping is once again based on the teacher’s experience and in-depth knowledge of students, which in practice is not possible for teachers with dozens of students to take care of. Therefore, another idea for the student and teacher is to rely more on technology to work and prepare ready-made paths that both teachers and students can use.
Predefined graph of dependencies
Solutions of this type offer a system that proposes to students various educational paths that they can follow while learning. Typically, they are organized as predefined sets of sequentially arranged exercises and knowledge presentation materials. The system draws paths for a student using the rule-based method with a decision tree, where decisions are made depending on the results of a given pupil. Thus, a student gets access to the very materials that should fit them and ensure a learning process that corresponds to their skills and abilities.
However, this method is far from flawless as well. The main disadvantage of this type of solution is the incomplete personalization of learning paths and the fact that the links between fragments of material are predefined — in other words, developed by a specific person based on their personal knowledge, and said paths do not change even if they are ineffective for a particular student or group of students.
Additionally, such solutions are usually limited only to mathematics or chemistry, for which the creation of connections between fragments of material comes somewhat easier. In some e-learning systems, the decision to choose a specific path and a set of content for a given student is based on the results of the initial diagnostic test performed by the student after entering the system. This is a good method to test a student’s level of knowledge; however, it is often limited to detecting said student’s knowledge gaps and offering material to eliminate them without providing opportunities to develop other skills that a student could improve.
AI learning paths
All the above-mentioned methods have two basic disadvantages, namely that they either fail to offer exactly matched learning paths, or that they require a lot of work. These problems can be prevented thanks to a system which, by collecting data from a given student and other users and processing them with the help of sophisticated algorithms based on mathematical models, probability and statistical reasoning, will suggest to the student appropriate materials at the appropriate time and in just the right order. Scientific research on teaching methodology, nervous system physiology, and pedagogical methods provides solid data on the learning process that should be implemented in such a system — after all, it is used to teach human beings, not machines.
On the other hand, it is very important to be able to see the results of the students’ interaction with the system and modify the rules in real time. This is possible due to the huge number of online learners, based on whose performance the system can determine what works and what does not work thanks to the power of big data and analytics. It can also learn what behaviour patterns are the most effective. The use of AI also allows a holistic approach to learning covering aspects such as diagnosis, gaining theoretical knowledge and practical skills through exercises, as well as maintaining motivation and regularity. In addition, a virtual AI-based tutor is never tired, has no prejudices, and does not build student feedback based on a personal attitude towards a given student. Such a teacher is always available ready to respond to any change in a student’s behaviour, and capable of anticipating possible risks.
In NUADU, by creating an adaptive learning system with AI support, we endeavour to take into account all the mentioned advantages and disadvantages so as to create a perfect system that will be a great support for students and teachers alike. Therefore, the whole solution is planned to be reliant on something other than modern technology per se — namely. a plethora of scientific discoveries made in such fields as didactics, neurobiology, and psychology. We want to use what is most valuable in the most important theories of learning, such as Behaviourism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism. Our idea is to support the complex learning/teaching process via employing educational diagnosis, creating individual learning plans, gaining theoretical knowledge, and building practical skills. We also want to give students the opportunity to fill in the gaps in knowledge and skills and consolidate gained knowledge effectively.
Summary
A system offering individualized learning paths for each student matching what they should learn at any given moment could be an ideal solution supporting learning and teaching, but what is the reality now? The truth is that such solutions are at an early stage of development, and though our knowledge about learning is growing, it is still in its infancy. Despite the fact that the future looks really promising, we still have to wait for it to come — most likely, for such a system to be created by NUADU.
Wojciech Wiśniowski is a biotechnologist — with an emphasis on “technologist”. A tech geek, always happy to spend a fortune on state-of-the-art gear to stay ahead of the curve. A devoted product manager and product owner with over 10 years of professional experience in discovering the impact made by modern technology and the possibilities it offers in enhancing and facilitating the learning and teaching process. And he is always delighted to share his passion with others.
