Classroom-Based Assistive Technology: Collective Use of Interactive Visual Schedules by Students with Autism by Meg Cramer, Sen H. Hirano, Monica Tentori, Michael T. Yeganyan, Gillian R. Hayes. Published in the CHI '11 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems.
Author Bios
- Meg Cramer and Sen Hirano are both currently graduate students in Informatics at UC Irvine in the School of Information and Computer Science.
- Monica Tentori is currently an assistant professor in computer science at UABC in Mexico, and is a post-doc scholar at UC Irvine.
- Michael T. Yeganyan is an Informatics STAR Group Researcher at UC Irvine and hold an MS in Informatics.
- Gillian R. Hayes is currently an assistant professor in Informatics in the School of Information and Computer Science at UC Irvine. She also directs the STAR group.
Summary
Hypothesis
The vSked system can offer an improved interactive and collaborative level of assistance over current technologies that are aimed at aiding students with Autism.
Methods
The testing and observations were spread over three deployments of vSked. The teachers and aids were interviewed and asked for comments regarding the system. The students were observed but not directly interviewed as they all demonstrated little to no verbal communication skills. The scores of assessments were based on several points of interest, such as level of consistency and predictability in the schedule, student anxiety, and teacher awareness of behavior. All field notes, interviews, images, and videos were inspected using a mixed-methods approach. Researchers analyzed the data for evidence that vSked was supporting student and teacher needs, and then examined the data in detail for emergent themes.
Results
Teachers noted that even during the first few days of use students would progress through activities with much less need for prompting from the instructor. Teachers noted that the addition of photorealistic images seemed to help the students understand, and that the kids also seemed to be much more comfortable with the new calendar system. The schedules are automatically updated and show the entire day's activities, which helped the students focus and reduced distractions. The vSked system also seemed to help facilitate students' ability to demonstrate their knowledge, as one teacher noted surprise at how well a student was able to answer questions that had been assumed to be beyond understanding. Despite the push for independence, the teachers were comfortable with the prompting given by the system. Overall, feedback from teachers and aides was extremely positive.
Contents
Contents
The paper asserts that this vSked system has the potential to offer an unprecedented level of cooperative learning for autistic students. It goes on to describe the results of several experimental deployments over a total of about 5 weeks in a classroom. The teachers had very positive feedback, and the students seemed to enjoy it as well. The authors note that it may have a few shortcomings such as being a little bit inflexible as far as ad hoc changes, but that there is a lot of potential for new features and developments.
Discussion
I am very impressed with this paper. Instead of discussing a brand new technology, it focuses instead on applying already-known techniques and tools to improve quality of life. It is really more about how a new technology can fit into people's lives rather than a simple statement of "here is this cool thing you can do, but I don't know if people will ever really use it". It seems to me that this contributes more on a humanitarian and human interaction level than as a clever new technology, but the interaction between human and machine is, of course, very much in need of exploration and improvement.
I am very impressed with this paper. Instead of discussing a brand new technology, it focuses instead on applying already-known techniques and tools to improve quality of life. It is really more about how a new technology can fit into people's lives rather than a simple statement of "here is this cool thing you can do, but I don't know if people will ever really use it". It seems to me that this contributes more on a humanitarian and human interaction level than as a clever new technology, but the interaction between human and machine is, of course, very much in need of exploration and improvement.
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