I'm sure that we can all agree that we have had an unexpected spring and summer behind us. The back-to-work orientation period is starting to be over. We're now again in full gear on the things where we left off before summer.

School Day's AI in Learning project began at the beginning of the year. It's the most important research project in which School Day has participated this school year. The project involves several universities and companies utilizing artificial intelligence. School Day is working closely, especially with Professor Katariina Salmela-Aro from the Department of Education at the University of Helsinki and her research team.

School Day is part of the workstream that explores artificial intelligence's potential in modeling, measuring, analyzing, and predicting student wellbeing.

When the project plans were made in the second half of last year it was impossible to predict how spring 2020 would change our initial plans. Conferences, seminars, and research meetings were canceled. Our work moved home with improvised workstations and Microsoft Teams. A more significant change took place in our research focus in the student learning setting. A positive has been that student and teacher well-being and social relationships have become a matter of public interest. The issue is now widely discussed in both domestic and international media.

We reacted quickly to the new situation and developed together with researchers from the University of Helsinki, a well-being model that worked specifically in remote learning settings. We were surprised at how much interest our new model had all over the world. During this spring we had teachers from over 90 countries trialing our service. School Day's model provides teachers and students feedback and suggestions based on student well-being responses. The aim was to support best practices and to encourage learning and development in remote learning.

The large user base also provided an opportunity to measure how distance learning affects student wellbeing. We will publish the results of this research in Fall 2020.

The global pandemic is, unfortunately, still ongoing. Many countries are still largely operating in remote learning and/or hybrid settings. Remote learning is not over in Finland either. Fortunately, we now have a well-being model that works in both settings.

School Day's research plan for the upcoming Fall includes also teacher wellbeing, more detailed analytics, AI research, and developing and refining the feedback provided to schools and educators.

Good luck with the upcoming Fall everyone!