Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMPOWER (Design and evaluation of technological support tools to empower stakeholders in digital education)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-10-01 bis 2023-09-30
Children with neurodiverse conditions can experience difficulties with executive functions and self-regulation. Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDDs) comprise intellectual disability, communication disorders, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), motor disorders and specific learning disorders (SLD). Technological solutions that can respond to such individual needs of neurodiverse students have the potential to both improve the quality and inclusiveness of the education of these children and support teachers in carrying out their educational vocation. There are considerable challenges in deploying such a solution. From an educational perspective, it must be clearly defined how to personalise interventions and based on what data exactly. From a technological perspective, the challenge is not only to deliver the resulting educational program but also to do so accurately and to the benefit of the child. From an ethical perspective, several challenges come together in the trade-off between the potential educational benefits and the necessity to process relevant information regarding children via measurements and algorithms that shape the educational program.
The core objective of EMPOWER is to develop and deploy a unique learning platform for personalised education for children with NDDs that goes beyond current approaches and paradigms and empowers teachers to support children with NDDs in their academic learning and inclusion. Children are expected to improve their learning and emotional skills using a game-based approach, and teachers and schools are expected to increase their knowledge and available tools to provide an optimised response to neurodiverse children. These improvements are expected to facilitate their participation in the educational system and improve their quality of life.
The core objective of EMPOWER is to develop and deploy a unique learning platform for personalised education for children with NDDs that goes beyond current approaches and paradigms and empowers teachers to support children with NDDs in their academic learning and inclusion. Children are expected to improve their learning and emotional skills using a game-based approach, and teachers and schools are expected to increase their knowledge and available tools to provide an optimised response to neurodiverse children. These improvements are expected to facilitate their participation in the educational system and improve their quality of life.
In the project's first year, EMPOWER consortium has importantly progressed in all the involved research lines:
EMPOWER has developed a theoretical educational assessment and intervention model that can be implemented using an integrated technological platform. This platform is focused on executive functions and self-regulation training throughout nine serious games, with more than half of them being developed and piloted in this first period with positive results. The EMPOWER platform integrates the gamification of educational objectives with machine-learning, wearable, and eye-tracking sensors. The EMPOWER team has been reaching these general aims step-by-step by attaining the objectives established in the original plan. The EMPOWER team has been reaching the project’s goals. It has attained its objectives through more restricted weekly and more general bi-weekly multidisciplinary meetings with different representatives of the different work packages to follow structured coordination of tasks involving the development and testing of the game platform.
EMPOWER has developed a theoretical educational assessment and intervention model that can be implemented using an integrated technological platform. This platform is focused on executive functions and self-regulation training throughout nine serious games, with more than half of them being developed and piloted in this first period with positive results. The EMPOWER platform integrates the gamification of educational objectives with machine-learning, wearable, and eye-tracking sensors. The EMPOWER team has been reaching these general aims step-by-step by attaining the objectives established in the original plan. The EMPOWER team has been reaching the project’s goals. It has attained its objectives through more restricted weekly and more general bi-weekly multidisciplinary meetings with different representatives of the different work packages to follow structured coordination of tasks involving the development and testing of the game platform.
The solution developed in this first period has been co-designed with relevant stakeholders in digital education, including students, teachers, and researchers. The developed games for training on executive functions integrate various emerging technologies and have been successfully piloted in natural settings in two participant countries. Therefore, regarding usability, feasibility, and performance, the games used meet the standards and the criteria fixed in the original plan and can be further used for assessing and training the executive functions of children with neurodevelopmental disorders throughout a randomised clinical trial.