Project LONDI (former OnDiFoe)

The Development of an Online Platform for Diagnosis and Remediation of Children with Learning Disabilities

The project aims at developing an online platform for the diagnosis, prevention, and remediation of developmental disorders of scholastic skills and related difficulties. The platform will be made widely accessible targeting especially educational practitioners like teachers, psychologists, and therapists, but also parents and counsellors as well as child welfare and social workers. The platform will offer a comprehensive evidence-based guide on learning difficulties and an online source for materials and tools for the individual diagnosis, formative assessment, and treatment of learning difficulties.

Within the project new tools for diagnosis and interventions will be developed and evaluated. The platform will include a comprehensive guiding system allowing professionals and semi-professional users to gain reasonable information and recommendations for the individual assessment process and the treatment of learning difficulties. The evidence-based guide will be designed in close collaboration with practitioners (stakeholder). A special focus will be on children with German as a second language and migration background due to their increased risk of developmental delays in reading, spelling, and calculating.

To support families in dealing with the child’s learning disorder the platform will include a psycho-educative tool for parents. In addition, to improve spelling performance of children with severe spelling problems a new computer-based intervention programme will be developed and evaluated.

Research Questions

• What kind of a computerised online screening is appropriate to detect learning difficulties and comorbidities?
• Can formative assessment influence the effectiveness of the remediation of severe learning difficulties at school?
• How can learning disorders be diagnosed in children with German as a second language? What differences are there between German second language learners with poor school performance and second language learners with learning disorders?
• Which contents (tools, sources, and information) does a web-based platform need to enable the different user groups to support children with severe learning difficulties?
• Which treatments are effective in comorbid conditions of reading and spelling disorder and dyscalculia?
• How can the spelling of children with spelling disorder be significantly improved?

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