Santaolalla, E., Gallego, D.J., Urosa, B.: Los libros de texto de matemáticas y su capacidad ... Interacción en el Aprendizaje CSCL y Juegos Colaborativos.
Educational Math Game for Stimulation of Children with Dyscalculia Pablo Torres-Carrión(&), Christian Sarmiento-Guerrero, Juan Carlos Torres-Diaz, and Luis Barba-Guamán Computer Science Department, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano, 11 01 608 Loja, Ecuador {pvtorres,cfsarmiento,jctorres,lrbarba}@utpl.edu.ec
Abstract. Dyscalculia is a specific learning disorder, reflected in an arithmetic capacity below the expected on individuals of similar chronological age, IQ and schooling. In order to improve these abilities, several studies agree that didactic strategies with play activities help to improve the difficulties of learning to count, to do basic mathematical calculations, to define groups of objects and in spatial thinking. From this context, the objective is to develop an educational game for children suffering from dyscalculia, available to the public on the Arcade and Android platforms. For development, the agile XP methodology is applied, in addition to GameSalad Creator and Viewer, OpenProj, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Voice Record Pro, and C++ as the base programming language. The application has been submitted for validation in institutions of initial and primary education. Keywords: Dyscalculia Educational games Mathematics teaching Gamification
Inclusive education
1 Introduction The educational game improves teaching and learning as well the student motivation in classes [1]; it has been demonstrated that in educational environments, game platforms complemented with digital didactic strategies improves the memory of objects and images, decrease response times and increase the visomotor cognitive abilities [2]; also improves the intuitive understanding of how numbers work, how to compare and estimate quantities in a numerical sequence and finally serves as a basis for future research [3]. Within the scope of the basic sciences in the general curriculum of infantile and primary education, mathematics is fundamental and continues its study until superior education; from the decade of the 70’s of the twentieth century a series of new notions of relation and equivalence between sets were introduced, that evolved towards a mechanical conception, and that by the end of the century would be established as “modern mathematics” with a domain of knowledge centered on the interaction between the teacher and the student, where knowledge is an important manifestation in the “games” of the school [4]. Knowing the learning styles for mathematics, allows the teaching process to adapt to the student, and becomes a practice with significant © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 Á. Rocha and T. Guarda (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology & Systems (ICITS 2018), Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 721, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73450-7_58
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improvements in learning [5]; research demonstrates how didactic resources from mathematics textbooks achieve development of learning styles, centered on modalities that group each style into active, reflective, theoretical and pragmatic [6]; in congruence, from modeling and evaluation of interaction in computer-supported learning and game-based learning achieves improvements in learning quality [7]. From this context of video games a tool of teaching support is proposed as a complement to the didactic strategies of the teacher. As a general objective, it is proposed the development of an educational game for children with dyscalculia, which is available to the public on the platforms Arcade and Android. Several specific objectives have been established for its fulfillment, starting with the identification of the characteristics of the dyscalculia and its connection with the didactic resources, which will allow to know in depth the learning difficulties that children have with dyscalculia and to find the best solutions to deal with such difficulties; the second refers to the design of assessment models applied to children with dyscalculia, and measures the degree of learning in which children with this disorder are found; the third is the development and publication of the educational game and the last is the evaluation of the didactic game in an application scenario, to verify the impact that the game has on children suffering from this disorder. The main limitation in meeting the objectives is presented with teachers and parents who do not have enough time to give continuous support to the project and therefore the necessary information of feedback is not reached in time, extending the times of development and tests. Another limitation is the cognitive bias of the subject, since the results obtained from the assessments depend on the degree of knowledge of these in the area of learning (mathematics), varying between different contexts. For the development of the educational game project, the agile XP development methodology is used, which has features such as: simplicity, communication and feedback; this methodology will be ideal for developing short-term projects. Several applications have been used for the planning, design, development and implementation of the application: GameSalad Creator and Viewer, OpenProj, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Voice Record Pro, and C++ as programming language base.
2 Dyscalculia and Education 2.1
Dyscalculia
In the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), dyscalculia is exposed as a disorder of calculation, having as its main characteristic the limitation of arithmetic capacity (measured by standardized calculation tests or mathematical reasoning individually), which is below that expected with respect to individuals of chronological age, IQ and schooling [8]; This disorder significantly interferes with academic performance and everyday activities that require skills with numbers and calculus. From the biological perspective Developmental Discalculia (DD) starts from the presupposition that the genetic syndrome is the cause of alterations in the cognitive profile related to numerical processing; a premise that has been supported by studies of
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Fig. 3. Evaluation of the application. Case study
6 Conclusions The non-technological didactic resources most used in the dyscalculia disorder were the basis for the development of the educational game that helps to treat the characteristics that these children present. Through a real scenario of application of the educational game, it was verified that this technological resource is an effective tool to treat children suffering from this disorder. Children, teachers, parents and the community in general have an educational game available that will help improve math skills and reduce dyscalculia disorder; this application has a friendly interface, simple and easy to use, according to the requirements of the user. The game will be available on platforms Arcade and Android, and is free to download. The XP methodology was a great help for the development of the game. As it is an agile methodology, and have continuous versions in each iteration, the user has a resource on which to provide feedback.
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