Public education stakeholders across Europe face societal demands for effective education and talent management and the problem of early school leaving.
To answer to these challenges, new methodological solutions are needed that reflect these needs, and promote the spread of adaptive educational processes that can be tailored to the personal needs of students.
These new solutions are being developed in EduBot project, financed by Erasmus+ programme, the project partners being the Interregió Fórum Association from Hungary, Instytut ADN from Poland, Harghita County Council, RegioNet from Romania, and Tandem n.o. from Slovakia. The duration of the project is 1 September 2022 - 31 August 2024.
The project’s activities are developing key competences through blended-learning metodology based on Al supported chatbot technology.
The aim of the project is to develop pedagogical tools and methodologies to support adaptive education, to test the tools in an educational environment and to promote their widespread adoptation.
The project promotes the STEM approach to education by the development and promotion of effective and innovative digitally supported pedagogies and assessment methods. Moreover, the methodology to be developed in the project applies an interdisciplinary approach, as the main idea behind is to develop a digital education process that leads to the identification and filling of competence gaps in an interdisciplinary approach.
The project also gives an example of developing partnerships between schools, businesses, research institutions and wider society. The results of the project can also contribute to the development of national STEM strategies.
During the implementation of the project, the methodological and support tools developed will be tested and applied in an educational environment to facilitate their widespread adaptation.
The methodology will focus on 6-8th grade students of primary schools and problem-solving competencies in STEM, and related and text comprehension competence. However, the basic logic of the methodology and the support system will be adaptable in other age groups and other learning fields as well.
The creation of a methodology relying on an AI-powered chatbot Assistant supporting the teacher constitutes the core innovation of the present proposal.
The EDUBOT Assistant will provide support in creating personalized, adaptive learning paths for each student, mapping competencies and identifying competence gaps, using online helping questions and explanations to fill those gaps, and suggesting small groups of students who need personal tutoring on similar fields and levels. The international nature of the partnership will bring into the project diverse experiences of different educational systems.
This will result in a holistic approach, leading to the creation of project products that can be widely used in diverse filed of education across Europe. As the use of AI and chatbot technology in education is very rare in Europe, the project results will be definitely valuable at the European level. All developed support systems will be multi-language, all results will be free and available online across Europe for all interested stakeholders.
In the project’s content development team there are experienced teachers, teacher practitioners and content development experts. Their aim is to address common problems of the target group, such as lack of methodological guidance and lack of time, the technological needs of children with fewer opportunities, fear of using digital tools, and the fact that many teachers use digital platforms without sufficient methodological preparation or training.
The target audiences of the project are teachers, trainers, students, educational institutions and all institutions interested in digital education, especially those dealing with disavantaged students.
Stakeholders – key institutions: schools, universities, NGOs – will also be informed at online and offline events, the final conference will be held in Miercurea Ciuc (Romania) where the result will be presented.
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