Monique Schaule Jullens – DigitalLife.nl

HARRy

Leontine Born — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:42:06 +0000

An Assistive Affective Maths Robot for primary school children

Children’s maths performance is declining. At the same time, the shortage of primary school teachers is increasing. The teaching time available is spent on the cognitive aspects of maths: ensuring that children understand and master the basic skills. But maths is a subject in which negative emotions also play a significant role – more so than in other subjects. And those emotions can have a negative impact on maths performance.

Although teachers agree that emotional aspects are important, they lack the time, knowledge, skills and appropriate tools to address these systematically. This gave rise to the idea of developing a robot assistant for teachers that takes children’s emotions towards maths into account. Based on brief, child-friendly micro-check-ins, the robot can deploy appropriate emotion-regulation strategies where necessary. In this way, both the cognitive and affective aspects of maths can be addressed, without placing additional time pressure on teachers.

Image & Video

Publications

Project duration

from 01-09-2026 to 01-09-2028

Project manager

Simone de Droog, associate lector Digital Life, Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Researchers

Somaya Ben Allouch, lector Digital Life, HvA

Marianne Bossema, docent-onderzoeker Digital Life, HvA

Monique Schaule Jullens, programmamanager Digital Life, HvA

Matthijs Smakman, lector, Hogeschool Utrecht

Veerle Hobbelink, promovendus, Hogeschool Utrecht

Rosa Alberto, onderzoeker, Hogeschool Utrecht

Mike Ligthart, assistent professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Sanne van der Ven, docent-onderzoeker, Radboud Universiteit

Funding

SIA RAAK Publiek

Partners

Wie Zorgt?

admin — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 13:56:00 +0000

The Development of an Intelligent Healthcare Environment that Supports Healthcare Professionals

CAUSE
The problem addressed by this research project is the high workload of care professionals in dementia care. Due to an increase in the number of elderly people with dementia, the demand for care is increasing, while the shortage of care professionals is growing. This workload can be greatly reduced by using smart technological innovations such as an Intelligent Care Environment.

HOW DOES AN INTELLIGENT CARE ENVIRONMENT WORK?
An Intelligent Care Environment uses sensor techniques and uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver personalized care by identifying and responding to care needs. The Intelligent Care Environment works together with the care professional. This solution direction is further elaborated in this project together with four healthcare parties and three innovative SME organisations.

Just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAI) are developed based on the case ‘Support with food and drink’, so that the healthcare professional is supported in performing certain care tasks.
An example of an intervention is giving the person-adjusted sensory stimuli (sounds, lights and projections) at the right time that stimulate seniors to eat. Such interventions reduce the pressure on the healthcare professional and improve the quality of care.

ATTENTION TO HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS
Not only the integration of the AI modules is important, but also how the AI is ‘shown’ to the healthcare professional. That is why this project also pays extra attention to the interaction between healthcare professionals and the Intelligent Healthcare Environment, which increases ease of use and allows both client and healthcare professional to experience a higher degree of autonomy.

By further developing the prototype of the Intelligent Care Environment in healthcare institutions in collaboration with various healthcare professionals and paying attention to the development of AI and Interaction with the system, the wishes and needs of the healthcare professionals can be integrated into the Intelligent Care Environment. This is done in three iterations, with the three successive available living labs becoming increasingly complex and realistic.

The project has been featured in the first press newsletter of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (2025).

Project duration

1 Jul 2022 -1 Jul 2024

Project manager

Stephanie Kramer MSc

Researchers

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

drs Monique Schaule Jullens

dr Michel Oey

Wen-Tseng Chang

Saskia Robben

Funding

RAAK-Publiek (Regieorgaan SIA)

Partners

SOROCOVA

admin — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 14:38:00 +0000

Social Robotics to Support COVID-19 Learning Disabilities

The COVID-19 measures have a major impact on how children are educated worldwide. Dutch children also had to make the switch in the first lockdown from physical to digital education. During the second lockdown, education and interaction between teachers and students was again mainly via screens.

The purpose of this application is to build on an already existing application by (further) developing social robotics as a learning tool to support teachers and students in the upper years, namely groups 6, 7 and 8, of primary education to gain insight into an increase in accumulated learning disadvantages due to COVID-19 measures in math education among students.

In addition to obtaining the insights, social robotics and the associated math modules will also be used to support teachers in providing math education to students in a motivating way.

The broad consortium, consisting of primary schools, teacher training colleges, municipalities, robotics company, colleges and universities, makes it possible to go through an iterative cycle during the project so that adjustments to the social robot can be made during the duration of the project. With this approach, the outcomes after the project can be integrated without too much extra development time into the already available infrastructure of primary schools for the use of social robotics in the learning process.

This research will provide insights into 1) the functioning of the diagnostic and educational function of social robotics in mathematics education in upper primary education; 2) the use and implementation of social robotics to reduce COVID-19 learning gaps in upper primary education; 3) how technological innovations such as social robotics are used by teachers in the learning process of their students and whether they experience a facilitating role of the robot in this; and 4) the empowering role that innovations in education can have in limiting the negative consequences such as the COVID-19 learning disadvantages.

Please see the SOROCOVA website for up to date information about the project.

Image & Video

Publications

Design Specifications for a Social Robot Math Tutor – ‘Best Studies Paper Award – Runner up’

(2023 )Mike Ligthart, Simone de Droog, Marianne Bossema, Lamia Elloumi, Kees Hoogland, Matthijs Smakman, Koen Hindriks & Somaya Ben AllouchHRI ’23 >>download

Project duration

1 Jun 2021 -31 May 2023

Project manager

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

Researchers

dr Simone de Droog

Marianne Bossema MSc

drs Monique Schaule Jullens

dr. Lamia Elloumi

Koen Hindriks, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Matthijs Smakman, Hogeschool Utrecht

Kees Hoogland, Hogeschool Utrecht

Stan van Ginkel, Hogeschool Utrecht

Funding

SIA COVID-19 fonds

Partners

DCODE

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 15:00:00 +0000

RETHINK DESIGN – CHANGE OUR FUTURE

The industrial revolution happened, and it’s over. Yet, design practice is stuck in the past and struggles to reconcile human values and algorithmic logics into socially, economically and politically sustainable models.

We lack the knowledge, skills and roles within companies or organisations to design for interaction with autonomous technologies in ways actually beneficial to humankind, and thus to responsibly anticipate and steer this transformation.

Imagining and manifesting alternative futures has to be a proactive effort. It’s time to rethink design and create new pathways to the future.

For much more information on this project visit our website.

You can send questions to info@dcode-network.eu
Visiting Twitter? Use #WeAreDCODE

In June 2021 D-CoDE was featured on QS Quacquarelli Symonds 4th edition of GLOBAL EDUCATION NEWS! Please follow this link and scroll to web page No: 43.

The newest podcast series ‘DCODE Conversations’ on ‘rethinking design for our digital future’ is now live on Spotify!

Image & Video

Project duration

1 Jan 2021 -1 Sep 2024

Project manager

Elisa Giaccardi, Delft University of Technology

Researchers

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

Mugdha Patil

Somayeh Ranjbar

drs Monique Schaule Jullens

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 955990.