New Irish project developing digital tool for early literacy screening secures funding

Posted by Learnovate

• ALPACA tool will detect reading difficulties in children earlier and save time for teachers
• Funding of €300,000 secured from Enterprise Ireland
• Digital tool is hoped to be tested in pilot schools in September 2022

An Irish team has secured €300,000 in funding to develop a new digital tool to help teachers identify reading difficulties in children earlier and more consistently.

Aimed at those beginning reading, the ALPACA digital tool is designed to identify any potential issues with reading at a very young age. It will also increase assessment accuracy and reduce time being spent by teachers on current paper-based assessments.

ALPACA is a gamified, highly-visual tool to engage all children. It is hoped that ALPACA will be ready to test in schools at the start of the next school year, in September 2022.

The 18-month project is a collaboration between The Learnovate Centre, which is a global research and innovation centre in learning technologies, Marino Institute of Education and the School of Education at Trinity College Dublin. The €300,000 funding was granted under Enterprise Ireland’s Commercialisation Fund.

Current practices for assessing young children’s early literacy skills rely primarily on time-consuming, traditional, paper-based assessment.

Typically, a teacher withdraws a child from the class and administers individual early literacy assessments on a one-to-one basis. Each assessment can take up to 30 minutes which means, in a class of 30 junior infants, valuable instructional time is lost.

Ideally, classes require screening and monitoring of early literacy skills up to three times per school year.

The ALPACA tool will allow for quick, accurate assessment of early literacy skills to be carried out on all pupils in infant classes It can also be administered within special education settings and with older struggling readers.

Earlier this year, Enterprise Ireland funding allowed the team to carry out a feasibility study among teachers which validated the need for such a tool in Irish primary schools. The demand was ‘overwhelmingly’ enthusiastic.

The ALPACA team is led by Dr. Jennifer O’Sullivan as Principal Investigator. Jennifer, who is a lecturer in literacy at Marino Institute of Education, created the assessment and the innovative digital delivery format that ALPACA will be based upon as part of her PhD study.

Dr. Ian O’Keeffe, a senior researcher at Learnovate, will support and guide the development of the digital technology and Commercial Lead is independent consultant Joe Fernandez who has extensive experience bringing digital tools to market in the primary schools space.

Learnovate Academic Director Dr Ann Devitt from the School of Education in Trinity College will take up the role of Learning Advisor on the project supporting the design of the assessment and learning approach and the classroom-based evaluation of the technology.

Principal Investigator Jennifer O’Sullivan says:

“This digital tool focuses on prevention rather than remediation of reading difficulties. ALPACA aims to provide support to children as early as possible in their reading journey, as delayed reading intervention can negatively affect many aspects of a child’s progress through school. We want to identify children who are showing evidence of future reading difficulties before they begin to formally read. While this assessment tool is designed for use with beginning readers, it can also be used to identify children struggling with reading in older classes.”

Learnovate Director Nessa McEniff says:

“The problem of undetected literacy difficulties goes beyond the clear disadvantages to the child and cascades out to overburdened and expensive remedial resources. This commercialisation project will provide a digital tool for early literacy screening and monitoring to primarily help teachers, Special Education Teachers (SETs) and principals to solve the problem of assessing young children’s early literacy skills in a time-efficient, consistent and evidence-based manner.”

President of Marino Institute of Education, Prof Teresa O’Doherty says:

“We are delighted to be a partner in this innovative project which promises to have a significant impact on policy and practice in primary schools. The awarding of this funding demonstrates the potential of high-quality applied research to address a key national and international educational concern.”

About Learnovate:

Learnovate is a global research and innovation centre in learning technologies and the future of work and learning. An industry-led technology centre funded by Enterprise Ireland, Learnovate provides thought leadership to the world’s learning and development community on the innovative use of learning technology for maximum organisation success. Global experts in learning technology, Learnovate help companies transform employee, student and customer learning experiences. To find out more about Learnovate, visit www.learnovate.ie

If you are interested in learning more about the membership structure at The Learnovate Centre, please contact us membership@learnovatecentre.org