AI-Enhanced Assistive Technologies for Neurodivergent Learners (AAAD 2023)
(Adero) Hi everyone, welcome to the session AI Enhanced Technologies for Neurodivergent Learners. If you're just joining us please note that remote attendees can put questions in the Q&A pane, not in the chat please, because the chat's not being monitored. We'll try to get to as many of your questions at the end as we can. Dr. Angel Morgan is an Assistant Instructional Professional with ASU's Learning Design and Technology program at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Her research centers on
inclusive learning design and assistive technology. She's here to talk with us about artificial intelligence tools that are tailored for neurodivergent learners and how AI powered solutions can address the challenges faced by students with conditions such as ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. Please welcome welcome Dr Morgan. (Dr. Morgan) Hi everyone. I am a new faculty member at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and I teach in the learning design and technology master's program. I teach courses in accessible learning design and I am also a mother of two neurodivergent teens. I know you all learned all about neurodivergence in the last session so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time going over that but what I am going to do is I'm going to talk to you about a few different tools and ways that you can help your students leverage generative AI as well as other AI tools that use generative AI plugins to help facilitate learning for neurodivergent learners. So, next slide please.
Okay, so they kind of went over neurodiversity in the last session but essentially we're talking about individuals who are commonly diagnosed with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or other neurodevelopmental differences. I do want to say that neurodiversity is a concept that recognizes and respects neurological differences. Neurodiversity in and of itself does not necessarily say someone has a disability. neurodivergence is about understanding and accepting of who we are and our natural state - the way that we are as a human. So it's respecting the way people learn and how
people learn and empowering people to do things their way and still accomplish the same goal, expecting different approaches and flexibility within learning. Next slide please. Some neurodiversity statistics in higher education: about just a little less than 2% of post-secondary students in the US are autistic. 5% report that they have attention deficit disorder, ADD or ADHD, and neurodiverse students account for anywhere between 11 and 30% of the entire undergraduate population. So this is a lot self-identified and so this is the prevalence of the students that we're talking about and even students who are not officially diagnosed or identify as neurodiverse. There are times when we all have challenges that we just can't focus or we didn't have enough sleep or we didn't have you know we're we're really confused. We just have those moments where we
feel so anxious or overwhelmed that we just can't you know function to that optimal level that we're expected to sometimes as as learners, or even as faculty members. And so I think we just need to you know step back and say it is okay if we have help whether that be from our professors, from our advisors, or even from technology. That is okay and so by being accepting of help I think that having that courage is something that we need to admire and acknowledge in our students so that they can foster a sense of confidence and be successful. Next slide please. Okay some of the barriers that neurodiverse learners often face are reading comprehension and fluency challenges, spelling and writing skills, low working memory, social communication challenges, planning and organization, and attention control. So we have often learners with dyslexia who have spelling and writing errors making it challenging for them to express themselves effectively in written form. With dysgraphia also affects organization and consistency of
writing making it difficult for individuals to convey their thoughts clearly. With ADHD, students often trouble with working memory, which honestly is crucial for holding and manipulating information over short periods of time. This really affects their ability to follow multiple step directions and will impact their academic performance. So it's important that we provide tools to support these students, or to allow students to use the tools that work for them in order to help them be successful. Next slide please
All right so that's where we're going to get into now um some tools that are, newer tools that are out there, that are based on generative AI to help reduce or mitigate some of these barriers to learning that I was just talking about. Next Slide. All right, so the first tool - okay thank you. The first tool I wanted to talk about is simply our standard generative AI tools like chat GPT and Bard. And several other folks have created similar tools that are out there that you can put in something called a prompt and the AI bot will respond back to you with information. The information has to be obviously used with discretion, it's been trained. It may not necessarily always be accurate,
however it often provides a good starting point or an information to plant an idea to help a student expand further in order to get their full - what they are fully potential of getting out. So tools like open AI chat GPT and Google's Bard offer a range of features that are particularly beneficial for neurodiverse students. These tools can assist in researching and summarizing complex topics making it easier for students to grasp and retain information. They also exel it breaking down intricate tasks into more manageable steps, aiding in task completion, and focus. For communication needs AI platforms can help draft emails, create talking points for presentations or meetings, there by actually enhancing effective communication. They can also guide students in making more informed decisions by offering pros and cons or outlining potential outcomes. So not
necessarily making a decision for students, that's not always, wise but helping them brainstorm ideas, or pros and cons and evaluate choices. Additionally these tools can provide a low stakes environment for practicing social skills allowing students to engage without the pressure of real world consequences. Timely prompts from the platforms can actually help students refocus their attention on tasks at hand and they can also assist in setting smart goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. So overall these generative AI tools can serve as a comprehensive support tool tailored to different needs of diverse learners. All right, so I'm going to get into some, a few tools that actually make use of uh generative AI on the background, in the background to help students that are sort of more focused for a specific task that supports neurodiverse learners. The first one would be a literacy tool or writing tool and two examples of these are Quillbot and Grammarly. Both of these tools and
the features that are on this specific page are free so these tools have higher or more advanced features than are on this slide, however what I've actually written here is these pieces are, these elements are free, so. Using AI technology Quillbot and Grammarly enable quick and comprehensive checks of entire documents. The tools offer a range of features that help students in improving their writing. They can include suggestions for spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar. Each accompanied by explanatory popups that
can help students understand the underlying writing rules. So this is something that is sort of more improved and better than sort of a spell check in in Word or in Google Docs, right. So these are tools that actually help students to foster and improve their writing skills over time, so they actually help them practice and become more proficient along the way. Additionally the tools incorporate a citation generator, for accurate citation formatting, paraphrasing features help in rephrasing complex sentences, thereby reducing the cognitive load associated with translating thoughts into written words. Summarizing feature is particularly useful for condensing lengthy passages into shorter passages that make more manageable, easier versions for students to grasp the main ideas and key details. Furthermore,
Quillbot has a feature called a co-writer that provides academic templates for various formatting Styles like APA and MLA, as well as for literature reviews and research proposals, so there are features out there that will help students sort of structure and learn how to write in specific formats with informed feedback as they're writing. Lastly, AI co-creators are embedded generative AI tools that support students to compose or to rewrite text in their own style so you can you can actually ask them to sort of help you with the tone of what you're writing, and you can start writing and then it can make sure that you're continually writing in a consistent tone along the way. And it also helps you level formality so help students who may, who may have difficulty with social communication and wording and phrasing that may be expected in different situations. It can help them tailor their tone and level of formality so if they don't necessarily typically speak in a more formal tone it can help them have a more scholarly voice and learn how to rephrase things in a more scholarly expected way as well as professional formatting. The next tool I want to go over is a memory and communication tool this is Otter.ai it
was mentioned a little earlier today when we were talking about sound. So using Otter.AI realtime captions and notes can work for both in-person and virtual settings to enable students to concentrate on the content of the discussion rather than the the task of note taking so this is kind of an important feature to think about as far as why some people benefit from captions more so, more than they have a hearing impairment. So this helps neurodiverse learners as well so they don't have to multitask. They can actually benefit from participating in a group discussion,
for example, or in a live session for a class and then tools like Otter.AI can actually, you know, it takes notes in real time and that really helps students along the way after the fact go back and review what they wanted - what was said. It's particularly advantageous for students who struggle with multitasking. These are also pretty accurate transcriptions,
which automatically punctuate and differentiate different speakers adding another layer of clarity for students. So Otter.AI is a little bit more sophisticated than zoom in that respect. The platform also allows for interactive note taking where students can sort of highlight text, insert comments, add images, offering sort of a more personalized learning experience. And they have a unique takeaways panel that summarizes key points from the transcript that helps in memory and comprehension. So you can also tag features along the way to enhance engagement to allow students to ask questions sort of, and contribute and come back to that question in discussions directly within the transcript. So um so basically for seamless organization and
scheduling Otter.AI integrates with popular tools like Google and Microsoft calendars as well as video conferencing tools like Zoom Google meet and teams. So this is another tool that you can use to sort of do enhanced more collaborative note taking as well as post transcription. You can go in and do some tagging and help organize the content for more efficient post uh meeting digestion. All right. The third tool I wanted to share with you all is um something called reclaim.ai um so
by intelligently identifying optimal time slots for various activities such as studying exercise meeting and relaxation breaks. This is an app that can help students manage their time more effectively. It has a goal tracking feature that allows students to sit and monitor academic and personal objectives so this is supporting that executive functioning, providing a structured approach that can aid and focus in task completion. So helping students know, you know typically when they need to take a mental break, or scheduling those breaks intentionally, supporting their own mental health and the way they work. It has a prioritization function
that enables students to sort task by importance or by deadline helping to combat the procrastination issues and improve time management. Additionally the app does integrate with Google Calendar and Slack to simplify scheduling and communication. This reduces the cognitive load and makes it easier for students to stay organized and connected. So those are just a few tools that are out there. There are many other tools that can help support
organization. There are also paid level features. For example, Chat GPT with its new plug-in betas, actually has tools that enable students to put in information and it will automatically generate a visual organizer, mind maps, concept maps, diagrams. In addition helping students, the paid version of chat GPT now, I believe, also has the dolly feature, which is an image generation so that, you know, can help students who think more visually. You know it can generate something more visual to help represent an idea and help them explain or express themselves in a different way. So that is my sort of short and sweet version of you
know AI can be used to support neurodivergence and it's not just a tool for students to cheat. (moderator) All right so we'll go ahead and open it up for questions. I don't see anything online in the Q&A are there any questions. (moderator)All right so from Nanette Schuster online - How do you recommend that we best introduce AI tools into our classes and introduce them to students? (Dr. Morgan) The way I do it is I lead by example. So what I do is in my - even for my asynchronous classes - in live lectures I'll demonstrate use of the tool. I will show how to use it to summarize an article or something that one of the readings for the week. I've often also incorporated a
task. I have a like a task where I ask students to, for example, teaching... teaching students how to write alternative text effectively. So this is sort of a combined example here... so thinking about ... Sorry, little background... I do teach accessible, inclusive design within the learning design program. So what we can do is we can say to either Adobe Firefly, which we also have access to within the Creative Cloud, we can give it a text description and ask it to generate an image so when we do that what we do is we see how clear we're actually describing it. So to help
become more proficient in writing alt text this is a great concept and way to kind of do that is how clear are you when you're telling the computer. How well is it generating what you're or is it is it actually showing your concept? So I think the best way is not to make an entire assignment into a generative AI activity perhaps but what you can do is you can embed it in Step one. Read the following text or summarize the following steps. Step two, create a concept map based on
that text. Step three organize your ideas into a, into a presentation of some sort. And that's where you can go into multiple modalities and say, all right now share back the synthesis. Put your own experience into this and share back so you've helped students. You've basically scaffolded it and you've helped them use it as a scaffolding tool and that actually helps. And you know, you can also put, you know, tips on your - within your - Canvas pages as well. Tip: this would be a
great tool. Could help with this task. Or just putting a link to something that actually help them. Just modeling essentially is what it is and being flexible to really help students learn what's out there, and how to use them effectively, and for purposes that are meaningful, right? So the more we tell people we can't do it you can't do it it's not allowed the more people are kind of curious and want to go behind and break the rules and do it. So my policy, in my, in my, syllabuses I use the policy that you may use generative AI as directed within the course.
So I don't allow free whatever willy-nilly use of generative AI to create assignments, but what I do is I put it in so it's intentional and students know and have a meaningful way to use it. I also, you know, in the first few weeks of class as I'm doing live lectures, I will, you know, model that, you know, modeling generative AI as a tool for doing something that you may need to do to help you along the way to be a more efficient expert learner. As in the UDL framework. So helping students to be learners and going back to an earlier presentation if it's not actually in your objectives it's not going to really hurt here. So helping students get what they need to be done and meet their learning objectives, just with some support. And all of us at some point, you know,... I had a long day, I came home from work, I really don't feel like getting this done but it's due tomorrow, or I need to get it done. Even for us, as you know, as instructors,
you know, we have those times as well. So it doesn't hurt to have that, you know, sanity check by putting a question or putting something into AI and saying hey can summarize this just to confirm that what you read was actually what you were kind of trying to get out of it in that sense. (moderator) So all right if there's no questions in the room we've got a couple of comments that came from the Q&A. Sasha says thank you for curating these resources. And then we' also got not a question, but another example of using AI in one of Andrew Maynard's YouTube sessions a student gave an example of using chat GPT to put a formula into terms he could understand/relate to a concept that he was not already learning in another engineering course and it did. And he said he now understands the concept
perfectly fine because AI was able to put it into context and directly applied it to a concept that he was already familiar with. I thought that was a great way to use it and... (Dr. Morgan) for diversity and inclusion as well. So especially sometimes for many of our International students who may not necessarily come from backgrounds or understand the examples that uh American textbooks or American printed journals may use as examples, they can't they have nothing to relate to to understand the concept and so so what you can do is you can put in the example provided as an American example, or as from one culture and actually you know say give me, and then say give me a, tell me a similar situation or scenario relate with the main point in XYZ context. So you can ask the, you can ask the bot to actually change the context of the main points. You can kind of, you know, formulate another example, you know, and even for us, you know, if the example's engineering and it has to deal with cars, for example, you know, you don't understand cars if you're not a, you know, you're not a car enthusiast or engines or or whatever, you can actually you know find something else, you know, to kind of reframe the concept to say, hey I'm interested in soccer, I'm interested in you know, tell me how this may be explained relevant to this other type, or this other situation, or this other context, which I understand more about and kind of relate to. (moderator) All right thank you so much Dr. Morgan. Would you all help me thank... So
I've picked up some good tips. I met a student at a a fair yesterday, a college fair, and she asked about taking a note taker, but her difficulty with notes is that she's learning English still, she's only been in the country a couple of years, and student accessibility can't help with that, but otter AI can I know because I turned it on while she was talking and I watched it. It's amazing. All right, we'll begin the next session Webspark: to the unity design system and ET web platforms commitment to accessibility in approximately four minutes. Please join us here in the Gold Room or in Zoom at same place we've been all day and thank you everyone we'll begin in just four minutes.
2023-11-12 19:48
