A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool from the nonprofit Digital Promise and edtech company Learning Innovation Catalyst (LINC) applies education research to generate different lesson plans for meeting the unique learning needs of each student.
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 affecting student learning, such as sleep, sense of belonging, and speed of processing, among others.
To generate an LVN-based lesson plan in Yourway, the teacher needs to input information about the desired grade level, learning outcomes, or topics for the individualized lesson. With this information entered, the teacher moves on to a checklist of literacy skills necessary to achieve the desired learning outcome, such as vocabulary and alphabet knowledge, and selects those that are challenges for the student.
A second checklist requires the teacher to choose cognition factors that the student might struggle with, such as attention or inhibition. From there, the teacher 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.
Generating a lesson plan within seconds, Yourway fleshes out multiple teaching strategies and suggested resources for the student, along with learning outcomes, based on the teacher’s inputs.
The teacher 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.
Educators can access the basic version of Yourway for free. Those who fill out a Digital Promise survey on their experience with the tool receive six months of the professional version for free.