Technology-enhanced and game based learning for children with special needs: a systematic mapping study.

Technology-based education of children with special needs has become the focus of many research works in recent years. The wide range of different disabilities that are encompassed by the term "special needs", together with the educational requirements of the children affected, represent an enormous multidisciplinary challenge for the research community. In this article, we present a systematic literature review of technology-enhanced and game-based learning systems and methods applied on children with special needs. The article analyzes the state-of-the-art of the research in this field by selecting a group of primary studies and answering a set of research questions. Although there are some previous systematic reviews, it is still not clear what the best tools, games or academic subjects (with technology-enhanced, game-based learning) are, out of those that have obtained good results with children with special needs. The 18 articles selected (carefully filtered out of 614 contributions) have been used to reveal the most frequent disabilities, the different technologies used in the prototypes, the number of learning subjects, and the kind of learning games used. The article also summarizes research opportunities identified in the primary studies.

Software Architecture and Framework to Develop NFC-Based Applications.

Applications are employing Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to interact with physical objects by using NFC tags. The architecture to implement these kinds of applications varies according to non-functional requirements such as the physical environment where the application is running, the flexibility to adapt the information to be manipulated through physical objects, etc. To cope with these challenges, this paper proposes a Model-driven Architecture (MDA) where designers are able to model the configuration of the system according to NFC based system requirements. Through a model-to-text transformation process, the MDA also provides developers with templates of source code for the applications that support the system. The proposed MDA process defines a Platform Independent Model (PIM) which supports a Domain Specific Language (DSL) implemented as an Eclipse platform plugin that provides designers with a graphical model editor, and a model to text transformation, to generate the source code templates using the Acceleo transformation language. The paper also presents the Albacete Photo Gallery case of study to illustrate the modelling process. The main benefit of the proposal is that it allows developers to create mixed environments where the availability and flexibility of NFC based interaction systems can be easily configured, extended and maintained.

Activities of Daily Living and Categorization Skills of Elderly with Cognitive Deficit: A Preliminary Study.

Cognitive dysfunction affects the performance of Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and the quality of life of people with these deficits and their caregivers. To the knowledge of the authors, to date, there are few studies that focus on knowing the relationship between personal autonomy and deductive reasoning and/or categorization skills, which are necessary for the performance of the ADL. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between ADL and categorization skills in older people. The study included 51 participants: 31 patients with cognitive impairment and 20 without cognitive impairment. Two tests were administered to assess cognitive functions: (1) the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA); and (2) the digital version of Riska Object Classification test (ROC-d). In addition, the Routine Tasks Inventory-2 (RTI-2) was applied to determine the level of independence in activities of daily living. People with cognitive impairment performed poorly in categorization tasks with unstructured information (p = 0.006). Also, the results found a high correlation between cognitive functioning and the performance of ADLs (Physical ADL: r = 0.798; p < 0.001; Instrumental ADL: r = 0.740; p < 0.001), a moderate correlation between Physical ADLs and categorization skills (unstructured ROC-d: r = 0.547; p < 0.001; structured ROC-d: r = 0.586; p < 0.001) and Instrumental ADLs and categorization skills in older people (unstructured ROC-d: r = 0.510; p < 0.001; structured ROC-d: r = 0.463; p < 0.001). The ROC-d allows the assessment of categorization skills to be quick and easy, facilitating the assessment process by OT, as well as the accuracy of the data obtained.

Usability Evaluation of a Distributed User Interface Application for Visuomotor Organization Assessment.

BACKGROUND: This article describes the development and evaluation of a distributed user interface (DUI) application to assess visuomotor organization ability. This application enables therapists to evaluate the acquired brain injury (ABI) on patients, and patients, to perform the assessment on a touch screen while therapists can observe the assessment process in real time on a separated monitor without interfering patients during the process as in traditional methodologies employing physical elements. OBJECTIVES: The main goal of this research is the evaluation of the quality in use of DUIs in the Pegboard Construction assessment with patients with ABI from the therapist perspective in the area of occupational therapy. METHODS: To evaluate our system, we have performed a usability evaluation following the ISO/IEC 25010 and ISO/IEC 25062 standards to evaluate software usability and quality and it was conducted in collaboration with therapists and psychologists that have previously worked with people with ABI in diagnostic and assessment tasks. RESULTS: We show the results of the evaluation collected in a table that shows the completeness rate for each user for both, assisted (i.e., the percentage of tasks where participants performed with test director assistance) and unassisted tasks (i.e., the percentage of tasks where participants completed tasks autonomously), the total time participants required to complete proposed tasks, the number of mistakes participants performed during the session, and the number of assists they required to finish proposed tasks. In addition, we also evaluated the user satisfaction regarding our application using the system usability scale. CONCLUSION: The use of information technologies in this field enables therapists to perform these evaluations in a simpler, efficient, and automated way. This proposal enables patients to perform the assessment as it is performed traditionally using paper providing them with a touch screen in which they can easily insert a set of pins into the holes. The usability evaluation of the proposal meets the appropriate design standards for applications of this type, and this is demonstrated by the high degree of satisfaction of the participants.

Supporting the Loewenstein occupational therapy cognitive assessment using distributed user interfaces.

PURPOSE: Improve the quantity and quality of information obtained from traditional Loewenstein Occupational Therapy Cognitive Assessment Battery systems to monitor the evolution of patients' rehabilitation process as well as to compare different rehabilitation therapies. METHODS: The system replaces traditional artefacts with virtual versions of them to take advantage of cutting edge interaction technology. The system is defined as a Distributed User Interface (DUI) supported by a display ecosystem, including mobile devices as well as multi-touch surfaces. Due to the heterogeneity of the devices involved in the system, the software technology is based on a client-server architecture using the Web as the software platform. RESULTS: The system provides therapists with information that is not available (or it is very difficult to gather) using traditional technologies (i.e. response time measurements, object tracking, information storage and retrieval facilities, etc.). CONCLUSIONS: The use of DUIs allows therapists to gather information that is unavailable using traditional assessment methods as well as adapt the system to patients' profile to increase the range of patients that are able to take this assessment. Implications for Rehabilitation Using a Distributed User Interface environment to carry out LOTCAs improves the quality of the information gathered during the rehabilitation assessment. This system captures physical data regarding patient's interaction during the assessment to improve the rehabilitation process analysis. Allows professionals to adapt the assessment procedure to create different versions according to patients' profile. Improves the availability of patients' profile information to therapists to adapt the assessment procedure.