Paper Reading #16: Classroom-based assistive technology: collective use of interactive visual schedules by students with autism

Classroom-Based Assistive Technology: Collective Use of Interactive Visual Schedules by Students with Autism


Authors - Meg Cramer, Sen H. Hirano, Monica Tentori, Michael T. Yeganyan & Gillian R. Hayes


Authors Bios - Meg Cramer, Sen H. Hirano, and Michael T. Yeganyan are students in the Department of Informatics at the University of California.
Monica Tentori is a student in the School of Computer Science at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California.
Gillian R. Hayes is an assistant professor at UC Irvine and has a PhD from the Georgia Institute   of Technology.


Venue - This paper was presented at the CHI '11 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems.


Summary


Hypothesis - In this paper, the researchers make reference to vSked which is an interactive and collaborative assistive technology for visual schedules created primarily as a way to assist teachers of autistic children. The hypothesis being tested in this paper is that vSked, when implemented in a classroom setting, can help students with autism be more independent and positively respond to community building activities.


Content - vSked is an interactive and collaborative assistive technology that replicates the functionality of visual schedules, choice boards, and token-based rewards in an integrated system. The system consists of a central touch screen display and an ultramobile PC 
(UMPC), a  touch screen handheld device, for each child connected to said device wirelessly. The teacher controls activities and schedules of students with the large, central touch screen. Each student's device allows for three kinds of interaction: multiple choice questions, voting, and alerts. Appropriate feedback is given based on the nature of the question and the students' answer.


Methods - The study conducted in this paper consisted of 3 deployments of vSked to classroom environments. During each study, teachers and aides were interviewed in both group and individual manners on a regular basis. Special video interviews were also conducted on a less frequent basis and were scored based on a set of criteria determined by the researchers to be important. Participants in this study included 2 teachers, 8 teacher assistants, and 14 students devided between 2 classrooms. To analyze the effectiveness of vSked, the researchers performed a quantitative analysis of certain variables (amount of work to transition, prompt students, etc.) before the implementation of vSked and after the use of vSked. An ANOVA was used to compare the before and after results of the survey and decide on the effectiveness of the system. All notes and interviews were also taken into consideration when making the final analysis.


Results - The first variable analyzed by the researchers was that of independence and the need for teachers to prompt students for an answer and further prompting for a right answer if incorrectly chosen at first. vSked resulted in a 54% decrease in prompting from teachers and a large drop in prompting from aids, although not enough to be statistically significant. The feedback from the device proved to be very valuable as many students responded positively when the fireworks display appeared after answering correctly. Also, the shaking of the correct answer after a student selected incorrectly was effective in getting students select the right answer. Consistency and predictably was the next variable analyzed and is important because scheduling allows a student to see what is happening today and prepare for it reducing surprises or anything that may upset a student. Also electronic scheduling makes transitioning faster as teachers can move everybody through the schedule with the touch screen. Transition time was lowered 61% using vSked which helps prevent students from down time in between activities which can trigger an undesirable reaction. When the students were to be rewarded tokens for their acheivments during the day, the teachers could use vSked to provide instant gratification to both parties through a fireworks display that stimulated many students at a time. Interacting with the community is very important when instructing students with autism and vSked helped in this are as well introducing new behaviors for the teachers to practice. First, students seemed to take an active interest in what their friends were doing and second, teachers began presenting the final token before rewards to students in front of the whole class to better involve all students in the rewarding process and encouraging others to do the same.


Conclusion - The researchers conclude by stating that although similar assistive technologies exist for special education class, very few attempt to unite individual and group accomplishments like vSked. They also suggest that this study has shown that technologies like vSked can help to alleviate high student-to-teacher ratios by prompting and rewarding students on the device itself.


Discussion


 I think the researchers proved the plausibility that their system helps with key areas in special education but they failed to provide any real data on the topic and further studies will be needed to develop said data. This study will hopefully make future studies possible for this reason. I think unifying individual and group activities through technology is a powerful tool that teachers will be able to use to a much higher degree in the future.