Tknika – MenTek-AI: Application to improve the prevention and treatment of emotional health problems in the classroom
Tknika
Sector: Education
Business Case
The Basurto Child and Adolescent Hospitalisation Unit received a 50% increase in adolescent psychiatric admissions after the pandemic. In 2023, 45,000 minors in the Basque Country had a mental or behavioural disorder (Fernández Rivas, 2023). Suicide is currently the number one cause of death among young people in Spain, ahead of tumours and traffic accidents (INE, 2023). The educational community needs tools to care for emotional health in the classroom. In this context, San Luis undertakes from Innovation a disruptive tool to take care of students’ emotional health.
Objectives
Design and development of an AI-based solution to address emotional health issues and prevent suicide in the classroom, with the following objectives: To provide students with resources for mental health care, depending on their current state: 1. Descriptive: Emotional status report; 2. Helpful: Emotional self-care techniques, with multimedia resources; 3. Supportive: Conversational AI Provide a psychologist with tools to plan campaigns for health problems, monitor students for prevention, train AI to help students.
Use case
Support tool for education professionals to address emotional health problems and prevent suicide in the classroom, based on 2 solutions: PSYCHOLOGIST APP (PREDICTIVE TOOL). Helps to interpret data and improve early detection of risk situations. It has an AI model trained by a psychologist, with protocols for attention to specific risks. Planning through campaigns on welfare issues. STUDENT APP (GAME). Collects data on students’ emotional well-being (psychometric test questions); uses gamification to encourage its use.
Infrastructure
Private datasets
Technology
Automatic or Deep Learning Text mining AI technologies that generate written or spoken language, images or videos (generative AI)
Data
Private datasets
Resources
The project was developed by teachers of the educational establishment: 1 analyst (Principal, San Luis), 1 analyst-programmer, 1 UI/UX designer and programmer, 1 product owner, and a psychologist (analyst and client). In addition to involving a certain student body as a clientèle of the student app, requirements were captured with surveys of 260 students. The involvement and commitment of the school management was key to the success of the project. The project had a project manager from Tknika to track the project according to the designed specifications.
Difficulties and learning
It is very difficult to combine the design, development and implementation of a software product while at the same time being a schoolteacher. The adoption of Agile by the development team was complex, taking into account the operations of a secondary school and vocational education centre. The psychologist was both a member of the development team and an analyst, generating conflicts of interest such as, for example, the prioritisation of functionalities.
KPIs (business impact and metrics of the model)
To validate the tool, a study was deployed to analyse social anxiety in two VE (Vocational Education) groups, composed of 42 young people of different genders (65% female and 35% male), with an average age of 19.5 in the 1st year and 21.2 years in the 2nd year (see study in previous slide). Once the tool has been validated, it will be massively deployed in 2 state-funded educational establishments and a public VE school (academic year 2024-2025), in order to test the actual deployment in different schools and colleges and make it available to the Educational Community at the end of the academic year.
Funding
MenTek-AI was funded by the 2023 call for VE Innovation and Entrepreneurship Projects in the Basque Country (Vice-Ministry of Vocational Education of the Department of Education of the Basque Government).
Collaborators, Partners
Centro Arce for Professional Training in Hairdressing and Beauty Treatments https://www.centroarce.com/ Tknika – Applied VE Research Centre in the Basque Countryhttps://tknika.eus/
