Open Call project, 2024 MONDEY

The “MONDEY (Milestones of Normal Development in Early Years)” project provides a standardized instrument for documenting early childhood development for the age range 0-6 years. MONDEY contains descriptions of more than 200 milestones assigned to eight different developmental areas (gross and fine motor skills, perception and thinking, language, social relationships, self-regulation, emotions), which in turn are intended to reflect general development in early childhood.

Previously, the researchers used a platform developed by an external company, which over time no longer met the state of the art and modern security requirements. Although there were commercial providers who could restart the project, the research group led by Prof. Sabine Pauen wants to reach all target groups directly with their offer, without users incurring costs or the user data being used for capital gains by third parties. Such further development of the project is now possible thanks to software development by the SSC as part of the open call. In addition, a high level of transparency and involvement of the developer and user community is possible, as the software development is carried out completely openly under an open source license. Some extensions to the project made possible by the SSC's contribution include expanding the applicable age range from 0-3 to 0-6 years, improving the accuracy of the prediction algorithm, providing a more intuitive user experience (UX), and meeting security requirements and maintainability/extensibility of the software. MONDEY will be integrated into larger health and education software programs as it progresses, with a prospect of being used nationwide in Baden-Württemberg by kindergartens and parents to support the development of young children.

The SSC is working to update and improve the MONDEY platform so that researchers can resume data collection across the country. MONDEY will be integrated into larger health and education software programs, and may even be used nationwide in Baden-Württemberg by kindergartens and parents to support the development of young children.