VRAILEXIA “Partnering Outside the Box: Digital and Artificial Intelligence Integrated Tools to Support Higher Education Students with Dyslexia” Students with dyslexia encounter several difficulties during their university career, leading to a greater rate of drops out with respect other kinds of students. Nowadays, tools for dyslexic students are mainly focused on primary and secondary school; conversely no standard methodologies are proposed for Higher Education. Starting from the attitude to visual thinking and creativity of dyslexics and their evidence neurodiversity. VRAILEXIA will develop learning tools and services for University dyslexic students to assure equal access and opportunity of success during their academic career and their lifelong learning experience. VRAILEXIA by using virtual reality and artificial intelligence will implement an e-learning adaptive digital tool (BESPECIAL) for supporting students with dyslexia. As a long-term objective VRAILEXIA will propose a sustainable teaching and training pattern for HEIs to allow them to boost their own strengths counteracting their seeming weakness. Moreover, VRAILEXIA wishes to emerge the mastery of thinking out of the box exploiting the ability to explore creative and unusual ideas that are not limited or controlled by rules or tradition. VRAILEXIA outcome is a network of HEIs piloting Hub engaged on a MoU for developing inclusion strategies for dyslexic students and enhance their opportunity of success during the academic career and integration into the labour market. VRAILEXIA’s general objective aims at changing the perception and implementing a tool to overlap dyslexic’s main difficulties with a positive impact on empowering their motivation and self- esteem. Consequently it will breed a common procedure within European Universities to assure services and learning environment based on student-centred vision and Universal Design Learning. The perspective is to enable Universities to develop strategies for inclusion of untapped students’ talents and strengths. Specific applied objectives: 1. Design, develop and validate of “BESPECIAL” a digital tool for supporting students affected by learning disabilities, dyslexia in particular, through an e-learning platform based on artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically customize itself and adapt its contents to the dyslexic students’ needs. 2. Develop Virtual Reality test for the assessment of dyslexia profiles and for monitoring the level of motivation, anxiety, development of soft skills after the use of BESPECIAL. 3. Implement 2 training pilot paths for HEIs in order to implement respectively: a) training course for HE teachers to respond to the lack of competences and awareness in student- centred teaching methodology such as UDL b) a Pilot Crash Course on Creativity and Entrepreneurship for university students in order to boost up their visual thinking and mind-set skills. 4. Assure the transferability of competences acquired during the training course in order to spread the student-centred approach within the HEIs; 5. Build an OER Repository with a categorization of teaching and learning materials based on Universal Design principles available on line and specific contents developed within the project; 6. Set up a MoU for clustering the actors/stakeholders to generate a European Network fostering a common strategy of inclusion within Higher Education targeted for students, teachers, administrative staff and as well Associated partners. VRAILEXIA leads to the following tangible results: -- sustainable tools to support Higher Education providers in implementing inclusive learning approaches for dyslexic students; - an adaptive learning environment based on Informed Artificial Intelligence for supporting students with dyslexia; - a set of VR tests and a ‘strategy based on student- centred methods’ in order to motivate them in their lifelong learning process; - a common pattern shared within the network of Piloting Hubs fostering Universities capabilities to become innovative centres in supporting all students in their academic and job career.
VRAILEXIA general objective is based on the motto “Dyslexic think differently: it’s time to change in perception and act in network”. VRAILEXIA aimed at implementing supportive learning tools and developing shared inclusion protocols for fostering all students to discover and point on one’s strengths and values. From this reason, it is clear how the potentiality of the project needed a transnational involvement and efforts. VRAILEXIA will lead to the realization of: (i) digital learning environment for supporting dyslexic students based on AI; (II) VR tests for dyslexia profile assessment and platform use effects on physiological aspects; (iii) online tools repository for teaching and learning; (iv) training path for trainers and learners respectively to increase the dyslexia awareness and entrepreneurial mindset skills; (v) memorandum of understanding (MoU) for clustering the actors/stakeholders to assess a European Network to foster common strategies of inclusion within HE. An important objective of the project is to strengthen the relations between the training’s institutions, project members, and the professionals.
Among approximatively 1.6 billion people with learning disorders, about 80% are dyslexic, 20% suffer from other SLDs. An investigation by Italian Ministry of Education and Ministry of University and Research (2019) reported a similar distribution of the SLD typologies within the students of national primary and secondary schools; of all the students with SLDs, 34% are affected only by dyslexia. The report also showed that students with SLDs constitute 3.2% of the total students at primary and secondary school, whereas at university, they constitute only 1.2%. This drastic decrease clearly highlights how university can become an insurmountable wall for them and how some actions in this regard are necessary to mitigate the main problems they experience during academic life. Another interesting fact is that dyslexic students in average achieved 6.7 ECTS for humanities in comparison of non-dyslexic, whereas the difference in ECTS is reduced to 4.6 for sciences. Starting from the necessity to untap dyslexic students’ potential and enhance their strengths, VRAILEXIA aimed to develop learning tools and services for to ensure to them equal access and opportunity of success during their career and their lifelong learning experience.