Tell us about UNESCO’s work using digital technology within education for health and well-being. How has this work ensured to leave no one behind?
At UNESCO, we work to empower adolescents and young people and respect their right to make decisions and drive change in their lives and communities. This means supporting Member States to achieve this, and actively engaging with institutions and technologies to find space for expression, resilience, and innovative solutions.
In complement to in-school interventions, UNESCO’s flagship programme Our Rights, Our Lives, Our Future (O3), supports governments and education systems to provide children, adolescents, and young people in and out of school with accurate violence prevention, gender and other health-related information through digital and low-tech solutions most often using mobile phones, radios and popular applications. These extend to hard-to-reach youth often left behind from life-saving information, including young people living with disabilities, in conflict or humanitarian crisis settings, and living with HIV, among others.
For example, in close cooperation with Ministries of Education and with the guidance of teachers, we’ve developed medium-tech tools and chatbots to support learners’ pre-exam studying through WhatsApp in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These were particularly popular, and we’ve received positive feedback on their impact and usefulness from learners.
Who are these tools aimed for?
These tools are open and accessible to teachers, parents and community leaders. This allows parents to review what their children are accessing online. On our WhatsApp chatbots for example, many young people use a device belonging to a parent or guardian.
Specifically for teachers, the Scripted Lesson Planner is an AI-powered assistant that simplifies lesson planning for teachers in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on education for health and well-being. Through an intuitive step-by-step process, educators create customized lesson plans and materials, saving valuable time and enhancing the overall quality of instruction. The tool focuses on topics responding to needs in the region and key to youth health and well-being, such as Life Skills, guidance and counselling, and sexuality education. The platform is open to all teachers in all regions.
Where has the content for this AI-based tool been generated from?
The lesson planner is built on a strong pedagogical foundation, it incorporates both established education theories and local curriculum requirements, ensuring culturally relevant, age-appropriate and effective instruction. A large language model (LLM) uses content from teacher guides, educational pedagogical theory, alongside national curriculum documents, so that lesson plans are informed by the country’s educational aims and policy, alongside tried and tested methods for teaching so that all young people can learn and thrive. These are focused on and related to education for health and well-being.
Walk us through how it works – as a teacher, what would we do?
When the teacher is creating their profile and as they start creating lesson plans, they will be prompted to share specific information, for example: the country in which they’re teaching, subject matter, objective of the lesson, age of students, lesson duration, desired learning outcome, type of methods/activities they would like to use, and much more.
This will then pool from the LLM database and suggest a possible lesson plan that is suitable for the specified teaching needs. This can be further interrogated and refined with additional prompts, and can be used as a basis for a teacher to build their lesson plan.
Is there a feedback mechanism or peer support for teachers?
Each user has their own account, so they can make notes on the lesson delivered and come back or revise at a later stage. This is personal, subjective and doesn’t inform the LLM. There are options however to make your lesson plan public for use by others on the platform, and they can rate the lesson with a star ranking mechanism.
We’ve also developed a community of practice for teachers to share and exchange. This space also includes coaching and mentoring opportunities, and thematic webinar series to strengthen understanding of key issues and developments in education related to health and well-being.
What has the impact been so far?
In close cooperation with the governments of Malawi and Zimbabwe, we held pilot sessions with teachers to adapt functionality and use of the platform.
The platform is free to use and has been growing organically since its launch in 2024. There are over 3,000 registered users to date. We’ve also had positive feedback and requests to expand the functionality to incorporate assessment tools. As we know the area of work is still experimental, our focus is to support Ministries of Education to fulfil teachers’ needs through an ethical and technical education perspective.
What’s coming up next?
With the growth and expansion of AI, there’s an opportunity to support teachers with aspects of their profession beyond planning. This might be presentations or assessments, but also holistic support such as mental health. It will be helpful to focus our next steps on strengthening the tool’s integration into educational systems across the region in cooperation with Ministries and teacher training colleges.
