Prof. Gary CHAN and His Team Won a Certificate of Merit in the HKICT Awards 2022 on an AI Technology to Prescreen Dyslexic Students

Prof. Gary Shueng Han CHAN and his team won a certificate of merit in The HKICT Awards 2022: Smart People (Smart Education & Learning) with the invention of AI-based technology to pre-screen elementary school students with dyslexia.

Research Background

Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects many students in HK. Without early intervention, dyslexic students may suffer from school failure, and in later stage of their life depression and even delinquency. To mitigate the negative impacts, it is critical that dyslexic students are identified early in their primary school years so that they can be followed up with appropriate intervention measures. However, the diagnostic knowledge on dyslexia of the major stakeholders (teachers and parents) is often limited. Moreover, screening and assessment services in HK is labor intensive, time-consuming, expensive, and often suffering from long waiting time due to workload of education psychologists.

Research Designs

To address the issue, Professor Chan's team, in collaboration with Centre for Special Educational Needs and Inclusive Education in Education University and Baptist University of Hong Kong, has developed a novel multi-modal Chinese-based AI technology to pre-screen dyslexic elementary school pupils (P.1 - P.3). They have designed a collection of interactive mobile games to engage the students, so as to collect their reading and writing performance in traditional Chinese including, for instance, the amount of time they spent playing each game and the quality of their handwriting. These multi-modal data are then analyzed by their AI engine, which predicts the student's likelihood of having dyslexia.

Research Significance

The mobile games are designed for elementary students, and the AI technology is fast, affordable and automatic. As a pre-screening measure, it can greatly reduce student assessment cycle by early identifying potentially high-risk groups. The results can also be used by education psychologists and other parties for further diagnosis and treatment, hence making better use of resources and channeling them to those in need. This effective pre-screening AI technology leads to early intervention of dyslexic students, benefiting students, teachers, parents, education psychologists and our society as a whole.

Congratulation again to Prof. Gary Sheung Han CHAN and his team! Read more about the HKICT Award 2022.

Photo of Prof. Gary Chan and his team

Photo of Prof. Gary Chan and his team