This project investigates the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to enhance participation opportunities for female students with Danish as a second language in Danish social and healthcare education (SOSU). According to the latest figures, one in three students in the SOSU programme has a non-Danish background, and the vast majority of these are women. It is crucial to strengthen support for these women in SOSU programs, as this will help to retain them in education and on the labor market and thus help to ensure a continuous and stable workforce in elderly care.

In this project, we follow a thesis that GenAI as a new technology with large language-based capabilities can help reduce the challenges that bilingual women may experience in SOSU education, both in terms of language, acquisition of professional skills and participation in education. In a collaboration between Aalborg University's (AAU) Centre for Educational Research (CfU), the Centre for Application of IT in Vocational Education and Training (CIU), the Knowledge Centre for Welfare Technology East and West Denmark (VFV) and 12 Danish SOSU schools, our task is to create new knowledge across disciplinary boundaries between SOSU education, IT-didactical technology development and humanistic learning research, thus nuancing and contextualizing the challenges bilingual women experience in the Danish education system.

 

Project team

The interdisciplinary project team is composed to represent both research and development aspects.

Associate professor Antonia Scholkmann is leading the project, with assistant professor Anne-Birgitte Rohwedder co-leading and associate professor Jin Hui Li contributing as researcher. Amina Sabah Karim will specifically research the digital learning practices of bilingual women in SOSU educations in her Ph.d. project.

Heads of CiU Axel Færgemand Hoppe and Søren Krebs Møller are standing for the organization of so-called Learning Factories, in which teachers in SOSO will develop custom-made IT-didactical solutions based on GenAI to help their bilingual students. Those will be tested and evaluated by the students themselves as well as by the teachers and the research team.

Head of VFV Maj Brit Weidinger is liaison to the SOSU schools involved in the project and coordinating the representation of SOSU-perspectives during the Learning Factories.

 

Interdisciplinary advisory board

The relevance and applicability of the project is ensured by an interdisciplinary advisory board. The advisory board consists of eight people representing different perspectives on the project topic and purpose: Professor Cathrine Tømte (University of Agder, Norway); Associate professor Vibe Aarkrog (DPU Aarhus); Casper Kjær Pedersen (SOSU-school Nykøbing Falster); Thomas Ketel Eggersen (VFV); Marie Braae Sørensen/Liv Metha Hvass Ottesen (Odense Municipality professional support team); Vitoria Uhler (International Officer, SOSU-educations); Abir Mohammed (SOSU employe); N.N. (Citizen in need of care).

Funding

The project is funded by the VELUX FOUNDATION in the HUMpraksis funding line.