The AI-powered platform, Yourway, is informed by the Learner Variability Navigator (LVN), a web application that Digital Promise has maintained since 2017. LVN curates research-based strategies for building lesson plans that directly address factors that affect student learning, such as sleep, sense of belonging and speed of processing, among many others.
In a webinar this week, Barbara Pape, senior director of the Learner Variability Project at Digital Promise, said such tailored lesson plans take a whole-child approach to teaching and learning.
“We define learner variability as the recognition that each student, and also all of us, have a set of strengths and challenges across this whole-child framework that are interconnected and vary according to context,” Pape said in the webinar. “And when you understand learner variability, you see a design challenge, not a student problem, and that’s where we’re trying to move with all of this.”
DESIGNING SUPPORTIVE LESSON PLANS
Yourway makes it easier for teachers to design custom instructional approaches that support the whole learner, according to Pape, who joined Dr. Cassondra Corbin-Thaddies, vice president of partner and client engagement at LINC, in the webinar this week. Megan Gross, an inclusive learning expert and former California Teacher of the Year, was part of the panel as well.
Demonstrating Yourway, Corbin-Thaddies clicked on “AI Tools” and typed “LVN” in a search bar to surface learner variability options from the platform’s list of other AI-powered tools. Yourway is currently equipped to generate LVN-based lesson plans for students in preschool through 12th grade. Pape said they are working to add LVN models for math and 21st-century skills, such as peer collaboration and critical thinking.
To generate an LVN-based lesson plan in Yourway, users must input information about the desired grade level, learning outcomes or topics for the lesson. The webinar offered this example of a learning outcome: “Students will be able to determine the meaning of grade-appropriate academic and domain-specific words or phrases in a text using context.”
With this information entered, educators move on to a checklist of literacy skills necessary to achieve the desired learning outcome, such as vocabulary and alphabet knowledge, and select those that are challenges for the student. A second checklist requires the teacher to choose cognition factors the student might struggle with, such as attention or inhibition.
From there, the user can click a button to generate the lesson plan or opt to provide more details, such as related documents or any standards to which the lesson should align. Two more optional checklists are available as well: one with background factors that can affect student learning, such as vision and primary language, and another that lists social and emotional learning factors, such as self-regulation and stereotype threat.
LIFTING THE COGNITIVE LOAD
Generating a lesson plan within seconds, Yourway fleshes out multiple teaching strategies and suggested resources for that particular student and learning outcome based upon inputs from the educator. The lesson plan shown in the webinar, for example, listed role-playing exercises as a teaching strategy that ties into social awareness and relationship skills, stating that the educator should “use scenarios that promote understanding and usage of key vocabulary in social interactions.”
Teachers can continue to customize lesson plans by clicking the “Request Changes” button and adding prompts, such as “Give me examples of role-playing exercises that promote understanding and usage of key vocabulary in social interactions.” The platform then generates and adds this information to the lesson plan.
“You have to now walk alongside the AI and check its work,” Corbin-Thaddies said in the webinar. “It’s a great starting point. The cognitive load has been lifted, and now we’re ready to get into design mode: What could this look like, what else could we add, how could this be stronger?”
Educators can access the basic version of Yourway for free. Those who fill out a Digital Promise survey on their experience with the tool will receive six months of the professional version for free, Pape said in the webinar.
