Project @pple Case Study 2

Student Two has a significant cognitive disability and 'challenging behaviour'. His use of the ICT system can provide him with a calming virtual environment that is stable and predictable. This appears to allay some of the anxiety and vexation that is otherwise usually evident in aggressive behaviour. He is in a class led by a teacher who is new to the School with 2 Learning Support Assistants. The computer provides a valuable focus for his energies that keeps him from making trouble with his peers and teachers. The software he is always using engages and calms him and stops him disrupting the class, hurting himself or others, freeing up the staff in class to work with other students. The activity has little or no educational merit however; the student is not learning to read but simply operating the linear sequence of the 'e book's' narrative compulsively and repetitively. The software seems suitably usable but Student Two has exhausted its meanings and messages a long time ago.

Video and observation with Student Two in the classroom raises key issues and concerns:

1. Multimedia can provide a popular and engaging activity for people with learning disabilities. Some users can search out content that suits their interests but the material contained in discrete easy to access CDROM-based packages provides particularly accessible and engaging activity for independent use by people with significant learning disabilities. The discrete software package helps provide a focus of attention and a stable and predictable environment to engage the user without distraction

2. Where appropriately challenging and varied content is not provided for users with cognitive disabilities, an ICT system can constitute little more than a 'holding-activity' providing a form of baby-sitting, in the process potentially reinforcing obsessive and compulsive behaviour rather than providing genuinely educational experience

3. Multimedia material for this user-group is needed that incorporates adult content and mode of address whilst employing 'childish' simplicity of interface and navigation for independent access and use

4. The popularity of multimedia with students with learning disabilities can be seen in these two video clips. Clearly this user group can benefit from the potential of multimedia as a tool for learning, leisure and communication alongside the mainstream. These 2 examples however highlight potential obstacles and patterns of use that could have negative impact on the user's quality of life. The technology may serve to isolate the individual in the class, providing a minimal learning experience and simply occupying the learner and keeping them out of trouble, even reinforcing obsessive and compulsive behaviour.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• accessibility
• usability
• elearning
• disability
• autism
• research
• rix
• @PPLE
• special
• developmental