20-05-2025
UAE: How AI is changing classrooms, helping students learn better
What began as a master's thesis on student engagement has turned into an artificial intelligence (AI) platform designed with the student in mind. LearningFREQUENCY, an AI website that allows students to get a better grasp of what best suits their learning needs, launched last month with the help of Dubai Future Foundation.
Created by former teachers Amanda Slavin and Arabella Nyffenegger, this platform helps students understand how their brains work, and with the AI chatbot, suggests the best course of action to determine which way of learning would be best.
'Engagement is very misunderstood in the education system," Nyffenegger said. "We believe that real learning starts with kids understanding themselves first and developing that kind of metacognition before going on and learning anything deeply."
After 15 years of researching curriculum and instruction, Slavin discovered a theory that made her rethink how vital student engagement is. Called the Seventh Level Engagement Framework, it was originally developed by Slavin and helps educators and parents understand and evaluate how engaged a student is.
Previously, she said, it was understood that learning styles consisted of visual or auditory learning. However, she said that theory has been debunked and that, 'we need a new process to understand ourselves as a learner which is based on these seven levels of engagement.'
This idea had already come across Slavin's mind; before the advent of advanced technology and AI, Slavin had worked with educators to support teachers in teaching a classroom full of 30 something students. 'If we know that they're confused at a level two or distracted at level three we can make changes,' she said. 'We also don't have to think that they're a bad kid because they're confused you could think they're just you know something's getting in the way.'
In her research, level two refers to 'unsystematic engagement', which refers to a person feeling inadequate, so they give up understanding, while level three refers to 'frustrated engagement' and is distinguished by a person losing interest because of distraction.
Slavin and Nyffenegger hope that LearningFREQUENCY can be used not just by students, but also by teachers and parents as a tool to help identify what is getting in the way of learning. 'If we can give them the tools to understand themselves, they can take ownership of their learning in a way that's deeper, more meaningful, and lasting,' Slavin said.
