Digital technology to support students with learning disabilities

As part of Quebec's Developmental Language Disabilities Week, the Edteq Association organized a conference entitled "Le numérique en soutien aux élèves ayant des troubles d'apprentissage". The conference was moderated by Catherine Bazinet, co-founder and creative director of Aléo VR, a pedagogical tool for children with learning disabilities, and by Marie-Philippe Goyer, orthopedagogue, pedagogical consultant and founder of Scol'aide.

Both speakers began their presentation by providing context for their work and why they became interested in and committed to the development of teaching techniques that enable students with learning disabilities to succeed in school.

Response to Intervention (RTI)

Marie-Philippe Goyer, with her experience at the Learning Disabilities Institute (LDI), presented the response to the intervention (RAI) which stands as a three-tiered pyramid. The goal of the RAI is to prevent academic frustration and challenging behavior so that all students can succeed. It is broken down as follows:  

• Tier 1: It is about effective universal interventions, commonly referred to as core instruction. For example, in a class of 25 students, the teacher will be able to meet the learning needs of 80 % of the students, which is 20 out of 25 students.
• Bearing 2: There is talk of adding additional intervention for students who are "resistant" to this basic universal learning. The additional intervention can be done by either the teacher or the remedial teacher, for example.
• Bearing 3: Here, the focus is no longer on additional intervention, but rather on intensive intervention. At this level, the primary focus may be on students with learning disabilities who require individualized intervention.

Marie-Philippe Goyer rightly points out that digital technology does not revolutionize learning. It is rather the pedagogical approach that the teacher can implement in the classroom that has the potential to make a difference. Digital technology becomes a support for learning. 

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

As an instructional approach for students with learning disabilities to succeed in school, both speakers also presented the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) model.

It provides all individuals, whether they have difficulties or not, with the opportunity to access learning. Students learn differently and benefit from a variety of teaching-learning activities, flexible assessments and tools to help them organize new knowledge and skills. AUC helps students become independent and confident learners (Ednet). 

Why choose AUC? It might be easy to believe that adapting educational activities can be more work for teachers. But with AUC, instead of adding adaptations and accommodations for each student, it is about planning and scheduling an activity in advance, considering the needs of all students. AUC offers multiple ways to access the same task and demonstrate understanding. For Marie-Philippe Goyer, it is about making learning visible, but in different ways and with different choices.

Here are some examples of the AUC application.

1. Access information in a variety of ways: audio recording of work instructions, recording of dictation which can then be done at the student's pace, use of digital dictionaries to avoid the learner having to look up a word alphabetically.
2. Allow to activate previous knowledge: digital or paper sketch-note.
3. Reduce cognitive overload: use of accessibility tools such as different fonts, enlarged spacing, removal of different noise levels on videos, etc.
4. Reduce the amount of information to be processed simultaneously: use of tools such as Lexibar and WordQ.

Other techniques

Catherine Bazinet spoke about multimodality as a way to reach all learners. This consists of bringing different information (audio, text, video, etc.) on the same subject by activating different areas of the brain. All these sensory activations will facilitate learning.

She also presented the Viau's model. It states that student engagement is influenced by perceptions of self, the proposed activity and the environment. It takes into account the learner's perception of competence, value and controllability. It is therefore a matter of ensuring that his or her perception remains stable and does not diminish. 

There are many ways to motivate young people and support their perseverance:

1. Through collaboration: success with others leads to an increased sense of competence.
2. Through feedback: to support the student's sense of competence.

Even with all these tools, some students still opt out of intervention. Aléo VR provides support through its virtual reality games based on the exercises used in orthopedic clinics. The company proposes an increase in the involvement and motivation of young people through interactive and immersive exercises to stimulate fun and motivating learning, real-time follow-up with the interveners concerned, detailed reports to monitor the progress of young people and facilitate communication, and a personalized and adapted environment to promote academic development. In short, everything is put in place to enable young people to succeed.