Personality insights algorithm, natural language generation AI and data visualisation for life skills e-learning

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Even before COVID-19, wellbeing among UK children fell sharply from age 12, and was 21% lower at 16 than at age 8\. Loss of agency among teenagers was rising and the UK scored lowest in the OECD on pupil life satisfaction.On top of these disturbing facts, a key challenge arising from COVID-19 is the further negative impact on secondary school student wellbeing. The OECD and others are warning of continued disruption caused by a shift to blended online and in-school learning and short-notice school closures. More attention is being given to the continuity of academic learning than to students' socio-emotional development, a gap which schools must address to avoid further declines in wellbeing.Partly funded by an Innovation UK grant, Persona Education has developed an e-learning platform for secondary schools, called Persona Life Skills. This web app aims to improve wellbeing among students, using a unique personality insights framework to inform the development of life skills such as self-control and resilience. Version 1.0 of the Persona Life Skills app will be released in mid-September 2020\.The pandemic has also created uncertainty among teenagers about their future employment prospects.Both students and employers believe developing life skills helps to improve employability. Many of the life skills we aim to help develop - eg. communication skills and time management - will contribute to their employability.We are applying for this Innovate UK grant to fund an R&D-led innovation project that will contribute to the education sector recovery from COVID-19 and help to limit the future economic impact on the current cohort of teenagers. This funding will transform our v1.0 web app into a commercially viable product that takes the state-of-the-art to the next level, which will help secondary schools address the wellbeing and employability challenges.Specifically there are three innovations we plan to use grant funding to develop: An enhanced algorithm; Natural Language Generation AI reporting; and advanced interactive visualisation.As a cloud-hosted web app, Persona Life Skills is purposely built to perform equally well in school or in remote learning facilitated by video-conferencing.The Persona Life Skills app is culturally agnostic. The underlying personality insights framework has been shown to work equally well for people of any cultural background and has been used in practice with 18 different nationalities. Moreover we have built positive action and accessibility features into the app, following W3C Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines.Our key objectives for the project are:1. Conduct research to inform innovation development plans2. Enhance the v1.0 algorithm3. Develop natural language generation AI reporting capability4. Design and develop interactive visual reporting5. Incorporate these improvements into the Persona Life Skills web app, market-test and finalise v2.06. Make the product available to secondary schools