Students with special needs or with mental health or behavioural issues may be in their classrooms. As such, educators must be equipped with the knowledge and ability to identify these individuals and tailor their approaches accordingly.
With this in mind, the LearnX Education Certification Programme is aimed at helping teachers develop these skills, primarily through self-learning sessions presented via the LearnX website or through its dedicated app.
The programme is developed by learning solution company LearnX; global sales, marketing and business services agency Lantern.AI; and micro-learning platform provider RapL Asia.
Schools are invited to sign up to obtain three levels of certification for their teachers – the yellow, green, and black belts. They need only spend 15 minutes every other day engaging with bite-sized learning content presented in a video or PDF file, after which they will answer a series of questions to gauge their understanding and confidence.
The content, designed in collaboration with the Institute of Mental Health Singapore and Marshall Cavendish Education Singapore, involves topics like intelligence and learning issues, separation anxiety, signs of ADHD, hearing and visual impairment, as well as symptoms of autism-spectrum and eating disorders.
Other subjects such as how to create a conducive environment for learning, managing a disruptive classroom, and how to conduct parent-teacher meetings effectively are also covered.
Both the yellow and green belts involve self learning, while the black-belt module involves a two-day physical workshop session. A certificate is presented upon successful completion of each stage.
Brian Fernandez, director of business development at RapL Asia, told FMT that the platform is aimed at helping educators beyond academic subjects, “so they are able to better engage not just their students but parents and the education ecosystem”.
Explaining the workings of the programme, he said: “The built-in artificial intelligence ensures educators understand the topic by presenting various scenarios. It presents a rationale for whether the answer is wrong or right, and is able to capture the understanding of the educator.
After an answer is selected, the AI poses a follow-up question to ascertain how sure the educator is about their choice so as to gauge their confidence level.
“Later on, it presents the same scenario to validate whether the educator’s understanding has changed.”
Meanwhile, the schools receive reports on the teachers’ familiarity with the various topics covered.
In addition, the platform, which supports languages including Bahasa Melayu and simplified Chinese, incorporates gaming technology and animations to keep users engaged.
To make things even more fun, there is a competitive element: a leaderboard measures the scores of each educator, based on factors such as how quickly he or she completes a topic, their confidence level, and their mastery of the topic.
Only educators who fall in the top 5% will qualify for black-belt certification through the workshop to learn from international leaders, mentors, and authors selected by the Institute of Mental Health Singapore, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, and Marshall Cavendish Education Singapore.
The first of such workshops is slated to be held in the republic in August for participants from India, where the platform was rolled out in December among more than 10,000 schools.
Lantern.AI managing director Chandrakant Singh said the programme has been very well received there, even though it would require some time before its full impact is evident, especially since the subject of mental health is still taboo for many.
Involvement from multiple stakeholders, he added, is key: “It’s not just teachers who need to transform, but school management and parents as well.”
To that end, the team plans to launch a separate programme for parents, incorporating feedback from educators, in the future.
The LearnX Education Certification Programme is ready to receive enrolment from Malaysia. Yellow-belt certification is free, while the cost for the green belt is based on enrolment size.
For more information, contact Brian Fernandez at 012-303 0270 or email [email protected]. You can also find out more by clicking here.