Digital Promise, a global nonprofit working to expand opportunity for every learner, and Edthena, the leading provider of innovative technologies to support educator professional learning and streamline feedback to teachers, have partnered to help train and support teachers on Science of Reading-based instruction by incorporating Digital Promise’s Learner Variability Project resources into the Edthena offerings.
Through this partnership, teachers who complete coaching cycles can select a Science of Reading pathway within the AI Coach by Edthena platform and access Digital Promise’s research-based content, strategies, and best practices.
Edthena offers the AI Coach platform, an artificial intelligence-driven solution to guide teachers through coaching cycles; the Edthena Video Coaching platform, the classroom observation and collaboration platform for using videos as part of professional development; and Edthena Organization Libraries, a platform for schools and districts to curate and share best-practice teaching videos.
The Learner Variability Project builds on emerging research into learner variability to support a whole-child framework for student achievement. AI Coach is an adaptive, first-of-its-kind solution that uses conversational artificial intelligence to support teachers as they work through coaching cycles. Within the Science of Reading pathway, teachers will have a full complement of content-specific supports—covering phonological awareness, sentence structure, and verbal reasoning—to help analyze their teaching and build their students into skilled readers.
Commenting on the development, Barbara Pape, Senior Director of Digital Promise’s Learner Variability Project, said:
Teachers need research-based strategies at their fingertips to implement Science of Reading programmes with fidelity. Our Learner Variability Project resources are steeped in research and made easily accessible through Edthena’s AI Coach.
Using the secure platform, teachers independently reflect on their practice and set near-term goals as part of a self-paced module that mirrors the instructional coaching process. Teachers interact with Edie, the AI-driven coach, who asks probing, open-ended questions and offers personalized tips and resources for improvement.
Adam Geller, Founder and CEO of Edthena, added:
The AI Coach process helps all teachers build upon their Science of Reading training by focusing on implementing best practices. Our partnership with Digital Promise ensures teachers’ learning experiences within AI Coach are grounded in research on how to help students become fluent readers and reach their full potential as learners.
The evidence-based AI Coach process is designed to complement the efforts of school leaders and instructional coaches. It helps alleviate time and scheduling restraints associated with in-person coaching sessions, which can often hinder ongoing professional learning. Teachers can meet with the virtual coach on a schedule that’s convenient to the changing demands of the school day, and they can pause and resume their coaching cycle at any point. This enables teachers to get the help they need when needed.
In addition to the newly-added Science of Reading pathway, available in both an early-elementary and late-elementary version, teachers can complete coaching cycles focused on standard teaching techniques such as checking for student understanding, balancing student-teacher talk time, facilitating group discussions, and more.
