Designing a platform for teachers in special education in Romania

RESEARCH

During her research, she interviewed teachers to understand their experiences, motivations and challenges when it comes to teaching students with special needs, in both special and regular schools. Some of the main insights from the research are the fact that teachers are usually not trained to work with kids with disabilities, they don’t have the necessary support and resources to help students make progress, and they don’t have a bank of educational materials they could use in class, while adapting materials to the different needs and levels of each student is difficult and time-consuming.

DESIGN DIRECTION

To solve the main challenges faced by teachers, the platform will help them create and manage individual educational plans for each student with special needs, set goals, steps and track their progress, and adapt materials based on the needs, diagnostic and personal preferences of each kid.

PROTOTYPING

She spent 6 months on sketching, wireframing, prototyping, and logo design, and she is still not done with everything she wants to do, such as designing the landing page that will explain the platform, from where teachers will be able to log in. Until that is done, the main screens of the platform include:

1. Students overview
   The overview shows a progress bar for each student that helps teachers keep track of the students’ progress within their plan. The progress bar is structured in 5 modules, because teachers need to generate intermediary evaluations of the student’s plan after each module. The activity panel on the right will help the intervention team of the student, which is usually established in the plan, to collaborate on the steps, observations and materials of the students.

2. Student’s profile
   The student’s page has 3 subpages: the plan, observations and profile, which includes their personal details. On the plan subpage, teachers can manage and update the objectives, steps and deadlines, while the different versions of the plan will be stored in students’ documents. The feedback that she received from teachers was that it will make it easier for them to analyse and update the plan at the end of each module, while collaborating with the parents and other teachers (yay!!).

3. Steps/Lesson plan
   This page helps the teacher to keep an overview of only one step they need to work on per student, to address the issue that even when a student receives a plan, the objectives are not considered or followed during lessons. To make it easier for teachers to connect the steps of each kid to the lesson plan, she designed the steps management page as a lesson plan, where teachers can easily take into account the kids’ steps when preparing for their next lesson.

4. Materials
   A big challenge that teachers face is not having the right educational materials for kids with disabilities or special needs. Searching for the right materials online takes time, and it is almost impossible to find one material that can address the needs and cognitive levels of different students in one class. Since teachers often don’t have the time or skills to adapt materials for each student, this page will allow teachers to bring an educational material that they have, and adapt the material for each student based on their profile. The coolest part (for Ana at least) is that the AI can adapt the prompt of an exercise to match with the next step in the plan that the student needs to accomplish, making sure the materials used in class will help each student learn and grow.

CONCLUSION

Ana had fun coming up with solutions to a problem she cares about, while learning a lot about design, logo, edtech, and the education system in Romania. Since the project is still not done, she will finish it and hopefully continue to collaborate with Teach for Romania for funding to develop it and get it accepted by the ministery of education in Romania (pray for her pls!!).