IIT Madras, MDA Offer Free Online Basic Course To Remediate Children With Dyslexia

MDA and NPTEL-IIT Madras are offering free Online course to Remediate Children with Dyslexia

Madras Dyslexia Association and National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)-IIT Madras are offering online teaching courses that provide remedial support to children with Specific Learning Difficulties. The teaching courses are available free of cost.

The courses are targeted towards teachers of primary school children (Classes I-V) and professionals such as occupational therapists, counsellors and speech pathologist. It contains simple methods of identifying and remediating young children with dyslexia.

Multiple-Intelligences approach in these methods, not only makes learning more effective, but also hones innate talents of children with dyslexia. Within a classroom, these methods enhance the learning of the entire class and hence they do not have to be administered selectively. The infrastructure required (at trainee's end) for this program is minimal - a computer with speakers and an average Internet connection.

Speaking about this course, Mr. D. Chandrasekhar, President, Madras Dyslexia Association (MDA), said, "The learning process of a child with dyslexia is supported by an eco-system made of school, teachers, parents, and other supportive therapists like counsellors, occupational therapists and speech therapists. Each one of them needs to understand the difficulties faced by a child with dyslexia, the strengths and needs of this child. This profile should be used to nurture the child-using the strengths to cope with the needs. Through 'e-shikshanam,' MDA is working towards disseminating information on what is dyslexia and basic remedial methods that a child with dyslexia can use to cope with difficulties in reading, spelling, writing and/or mathematics."

The e-shikshanam course has been produced by NPTEL, IIT Madras for MDA and is being hosted on the institute's platform. The course is split into short segments which are delivered through videos and transcripts. Every week a new module is made available and can be completed at a convenient time and place.

Quizzes at the end of each segment allow self-evaluation. After completion of the course, trainees can earn a certificate after taking an examination, viewing case studies and analysing them, and answer questions related to them.

Highlighting the impact of this course, which was launched a year ago on April 2019, Prof Andrew Thangaraj, NPTEL Coordinator, IIT Madras, said, "We are glad that this technological leverage is making such a positive impact in the lives of the children with dyslexia and their caregivers. We hope to continue partnering with Madras Dyslexia Association, to help provide support to even larger number of children through newer programs."

The course is hosted on NPTEL web portal (https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/), which has enabled MDA to offer the course free of cost to anybody who is interested in equipping themselves with strategies to cope with difficulties in reading, spelling, writing and mathematics.

The ongoing course aims to help mainstream teachers and parents who teach children at the primary school level. This course consists of the following modules:

• Introduction to dyslexia
• Child Development
• Screening
• Reading
• Spelling
• Writing
• Math
• Study Skills
• Multiple Intelligence (MI)

The MDA 'e-shikshanam' is enabling timely remedial help to many more children with learning difficulties. Through this, MDA is striving to achieve its mission of facilitating a Dyslexia-sensitive society. Production of a similar course for teachers teaching in Tamil is in progress. This would help to reach-out to children across Tamil Nadu.

Dyslexia is a neurological life-long condition which displays no physical manifestations. These children have average to above-average IQ with unique potentials and abilities for out-of-box thinking. Yet, they exhibit significant disparity between their actual performance and their expected class-level performance.

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