KES – AMSTA 2012 ICT - based Alternative and Augmentative Communication
Potentials of the Tangible User Interface (TUI) in Enhancing Inclusion of People with Special Needs in the ICT-Assisted Learning and e-Accessibility Matej Zajc1, Andreja Istenič Starčič2, 3 1 University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Electrical Engineering
[email protected] 2
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering 3University of Primorska, Faculty of Education
[email protected]
Dubrovnik, 25. June 2012
Introduction •
Inclusion of persons with disabilities in the main-stream education is increasingly enhanced.
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The presented example focuses on inclusion of individuals for whom their learning environment is created and adapted according to their special needs and capabilities.
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Persons with disabilities are often disadvantaged in ICT and in participating in the classroom collaborative activities.
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Aim of our work is establishing learning environments with multimedia and ICT.
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The paper presents a novel interactive application utilizing tangible user interface (TUI) as an alternative input device for computer-supported collaborative learning and game based-learning.
The findings indicate high usability of TUI for people with physical impairment and severe to mild learning difficulties for whom it enables inclusive ICT and e-accessibility.
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Enhancing Inclusion of People with Special Needs
(1) TUIs support concept development, with physical and virtual representations (2) TUI manipulative properties support students with low motor skills and difficulties in their learning as well as in their inclusion in classroom activities.
This paper presents a novel research effort in investigating the role of a tabletop system using tangible user interface (TUI) in the classroom environment and in developing innovative interactive game.
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Detailed overview • •
The system to be used by the target-group consisting of diverse groups of learners with special needs should be intuitive and user-friendly. On the other hand, its developers should be offered a simple environment to develop applications with support of developers community.
The tasks pursued in our research were to: 1. enhance computer-supported collaborative learning and interaction for people with special needs and for diverse learner groups in inclusive classrooms, and 2. facilitate game-based learning supported by an innovative approach to learning by playing through interacting with tangible objects.
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Computer Interfaces Used in Creation of Learning Environments •
A desk is a natural school environment for learning, collaboration and problem solving desktop systems enable introduction of a computer in the classroom.
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Classroom environments require a low-cost, easy-to-use system that ideally utilizes existing equipment, e.g. computer, monitor, web camera.
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TUIs present a natural fusion of physical and digital worlds - exploring advantages of natural interfaces that are intuitive and easy to learn
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What is TUI (Tangible User Interface)?
http://trackmate.sourceforge.net/
• Tangible User Interface (TUI): „A tangible user interface (TUI) is a user interface in which a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment.“ (Wikipedia) •
The main potential of TUIs for human computer interaction is close coupling of action and perception space [26].
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TUIs enables ubiquitous implemention of computing in education.
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Tangible vs. Touch interfaces •
Technological advances have introduced a number of new input devices, such as touch-based interaction and tangible user interfaces.
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Multi-touch systems, offered by tablet computers for example, offer several advantages over TUIs, providing more dynamic content and control capabilities, at the same time enabling users to use their fingers.
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Tangibles, however enable quicker acquisition of control tasks and more accurate manipulation [29], especially for people with special needs.
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TUI - System architecture •
The Trackmate open-source system was selected as a reference system in designing a prototype
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Based on an open-source initiative environment allowing computers to recognize the tagged objects when placed on a tabletop surface.
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Tangible tabletop system is connected to a computer. http://trackmate.sourceforge.net/
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TUI - System architecture After designing the initial prototype of the tabletop system, we developed several applications and tested them in the classroom environment.
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The proposed tabletop system is composed of TUI connected to a computer running applications that are displayed on a monitor.
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The main components: transparent surface, tangible objects with a unique circular barcode, web-camera.
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The object is detected by the camera and decoded by the Trackmate Tracker [16], which sends the object data via LusidOSC.
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The information about the user interactions with objects is used as an input data in the application. The interactive application is programmed in Processing [22]. KES-AMSTA 2012, Dubrovnik
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Background •
The aim of our previous work was to utilize tangible objects in learning mathematics to follow the procedure on the paper for – addition concepts [11] and – geometry concepts [13]
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Interactive Game Design and Development Raindrop Catcher (1/2) •
Based on the shared ideas, the Raindrop catcher was developed at weekly intervals from initial design to the final version.
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Each tangible object has a corresponding catcher on the monitor The raindrops are randomly dropping from the top of the monitor. The application monitors if the catcher properly interacts with the raindrops and updates the results.
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Interactive Game Design and Development Raindrop Catcher (2/2) 1. The objective is to catch the raindrops by appropriate movements of the objects on the tabletop surface. 2. The game allows two players to play simultaneously. 3. Each player collects points by collecting the raindrops with a catcher. 4. The raindrop’s size defines the number of points to be collected. While the level of the collected points increases the size of the catcher decreases 5. and the time intervals between the raindrops get shorter. 6. The game ends when one of the players misses the pre-set number of the raindrops. 25.6.2012
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Case study (1/2) •
A case study was conducted to support the application development and to identify the use of TUI for groups of end users in an authentic educational setting.
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The final evaluation testing was conducted with two groups of students with motor impairment and students with severe to mild learning diffculties: – 23 primary school pupils aged 7-8 years, 11 girls and 12 boys. – 14 vocational-school students aged 16-17 years, 6 girls and 8 boys.
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The data was collected by teachers and experts observing students working individually and in groups.
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Case study (2/2) The study was focused on two research questions to identify usefulness of computer supported by TUI in inclusive classroom and efficiency of TUI-supported game-based learning: (1) Was the computer supported collaborative learning well applied in the inclusive classroom and for TUI for students having difficulties in using the computer’s input devices: keyboard and mouse? (2) Was the TUI-supported game-based learning efficient for the students with motor impairment and for the students with severe to mild learning difficulties?
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Observations and results •
Results of our evaluation testing prove that TUI enabled these students for equal engagement in the game-based learning process.
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TUI is useful for students who find it difficult to use the computer by the input devices, i.e. the keyboard and the mouse.
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TUI improves the collaboration space, thus supporting two persons in using the computer synchronously, by exchanging their left and right hand.
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In a classroom, TUI allows groups of students to move around theinteractive table while exchanging themselves and interacting.
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Conclusion •
TUI supported game-based learning enabled students with motor impairment and students with severe to mild learning difficulties to overcome usual limitations with using computers.
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Evaluation findings of the presented interactive game, together with applications presented in [11] and [13], prove Trackmate system [28] to be a very useful and low-cost interactive interface for the school environment.
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An inexpensive hardware and robust application make it an ideal solution for being used in the classroom environment. These attributes together with the Trackmate as an open-source environment are found attractive also for other members of the developers’ community.
http://trackmate.sourceforge.net/
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