Tutor Project: An Intelligent Tutoring System to Improve Cognitive Disabled People Integration J. Rubio1,*, C. Vaquero1, J.M. López de Ipiña1, E. Irigoyen2, K. L. de Ipiña2, N. Garay2, A. Conde2, M. Larrañaga2, A. Ezeiza2, A. Soraluze3, M. Peñagarikano2, G. Bordel2, L. J. Rodríguez2, J.M. López2, M. Ezquerra3, and D. Oregi3 1
Fundación LEIA, (Spain)
[email protected] 2 Universidad del País Vasco – (UPV/EHU) (Spain) 3 Gureak Group (Spain) Abstract. Nowadays, the integration of people with cognitive disabilities, especially in the work environment in a growing competitive market, is a difficult task. The TUTOR project is addressed to the development and testing of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). The ITS runs on a handheld device and its aim is to increase the autonomy of people with cognitive disabilities in labour and daily life activities, therefore, improving the social and labour integration of this collective and its quality of live. This paper describes the objectives of this project, the methodology followed, some preliminary achieved results and the future planned activities of this research group. Keywords: intelligent tutoring system, coaching, cognitive disabilities, autonomy improvement.
1 The Idea The main aim of the TUTOR project is to develop and test an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) to increase the autonomy of people with cognitive disabilities in labour and daily life activities, therefore, improving the social and labour integration of this collective and its quality of live. The ITS runs on a handheld device and allows the user to receive assistance when facing complicated situations during work or daily tasks, filling the gap between the skills requested for the tasks and the user capabilities. Because of the broad variability in people with disabilities for doing diversified tasks, a Task Management System (TMS) has been designed. This system includes a Content Management System (CMS) and modules for ergonomic characteristics and personal information of users. TMS has been designed to allow a comfortable and simple configuration, giving the possibility to build personalized profiles of the final users that will be loaded into the Intelligent Tutor. A virtual coach prototype and a CMS, as first step in the project, are being evaluated in several real cases gathering work and daily activities. *
Corresponding author.
K. Miesenberger et al. (Eds.): ICCHP 2008, LNCS 5105, pp. 729–732, 2008. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008
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This project emerges from the needs detected by GUREAK ARABA S.L. (GUREAK Group) a disabled people employer group with more of 3,800 workers, located in the Basque Country, Spain. The project is being tackled by a multidisciplinary research team: LEIA Research Centre, University of the Basque Country - GAL-LAN, LIPCNE, IXA research groups and the group of Computational Intelligence -, Gureak Group and Isabel Orbe Down Syndrome Association.
2 The State of the Art Nowadays, the integration of people with cognitive disabilities, especially in the work environment in a growing competitive market, is a problem. Current attempts to overcome it are based on the concurrent contribution of new and advanced technologies, in what is called quality of live technology [1]. However at the moment, the number of available specific products and tools for the cognitive disability is limited, especially those which take into account the singular configuration that is currently employed to support the everyday living and working activities of people with cognitive disabilities [2,3] with the assistance of a dedicated caregiver or a human job coach. In this sense TUTOR project collects the idea of an active distributed support system where the knowledge of how to perform an activity is shared not only among people, but also among people and artefacts. [4]
3 The Methodology − Analysis of needs and users characterization: identifying the user, the tasks and context and, in working environments also the client, requirements and the human machine interaction elements to take into account. − ITS modular architecture design. − Virtual Coach and CMS prototype development: the modules (JAVA+xml based) running in the smart-phone and the CMS were developed from a user centred perspective, integrating in this task the users and the trainers/caregivers feedback. − Prototype assessment: A set of indicators of efficiency and effectiveness during the accomplish of the different tasks and a evaluation-assistant module running on the smart-phone, that collects information about the use of the coach, were created. The satisfactions of the user and, in labour tasks of the employer, are also collected through questionnaires. These set of tools are at the moment being applied in different real cases in labour (industrial cleaning services, pharmaceutical production plant, beadle tasks, photocopy shop…) and in daily tasks environments. − ITS development and integration: taking into account the results in the previous phases new modules are being developed to incorporate intelligent and networking capabilities to the system.
4 Results and Impact As a result of the work, a virtual coach and a CMS have been developed. The whole set works as an active distributed support system and allows to compensate users
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disability through task programming, facilitating interruption and resuming of tasks, offering help in blocking situations and reminding key points or steps of a task among other capabilities. It also facilitates the caregivers or trainers tasks by offering them an easy and innovative tool to be used specially in the training processes. The preliminary results of the system evaluation indicate a high level of satisfaction of both the users and the caregivers/trainers/clients. On one hand, it is increasing the autonomy of the users, improving their training and the quality of their work. On the other, the trainers count on a new and easily configurable tool that reduces the time they have to dedicate in training. Especially in the work environment, the better quality of service and the cost reduction in hours can be an opportunity to advance in the labour integration of the disabled people collective.
5 Conclusion and Planned Activities There is a consensus between all the people involved in the project that the TUTOR system can be a very useful tool to achieve the goal of increasing the autonomy of the disabled people collective. Simultaneously, the job done has offered an opportunity to establish a solid link of communication between the social world of disabled people, caregivers and trainers and the technological world of researchers. This link is leading to improve the reciprocal knowledge and to overcome the gap between these two, in many occasions, too separated worlds. In these sense work is already being done to fulfil the new challenges that the project collaboration is generating. Complementary tools are being integrated in the system to improve its usefulness and to include the system within an ambient intelligence architecture. These tools are based on pattern matching (images and speech), human emotional feeling analysis, contextual information deployment (GPS, networking), and Artificial Intelligent (AI) techniques to give the system the capacity of dynamic adaptation to the learning process. Acknowledgments. The authors thank the members of Grupo Gureak (Gureak Araba, TP Gureak, Galant, Atzegi), Down Araba -Isabel Orbe Association. The research is sponsored by: Basque Government, Spanish Ministry of Industry, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Affairs (IMSERSO).
References 1. Cooper, R.A., Cooper, R.: The Potential of Technology to Improve Quality of Live. Challenges for Assistive Technology. In: AAATE 2007. 9th European Conference for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe Proceedings Book (2007) ISBN: 978-158603-791-8 2. García, J., López de Ipiña, K., Irigoyen, E., Elorriaga, J.A., Garay, N., Zulueta, E., Rubio, J., Vaquero, C., Peñagarikano, M., López, J.M., Ezeiza, A., López de Ipiña, J.M.: Intelligent Tutoring System to Integrate People with Down Syndrome into Work Environments. In: IADAT-e2006. International Conference on Education. Conference Proceedings Book. International Conference on Education. IADAT. Innovation, Technology and Research on Education, Barcelona, Spain, July 12-14, 2006, pp. 120–123 (2006) ISBN: 84-933971-9-9
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3. Uriarte, G., et al.: Tutores Inteligentes sobre Plataforma Móvil para la Integración Laboral de Personas con Discapacidad. In: Conference Proceedings of XXII Seminario LatinoAmericano de Gestión Tecnológica – ALTEC 2007, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2007) 4. Carmien, S., DePaula, R., Gorman, A., Kintsch, A.: Increasing Workplace Independence for People with Cognitive Disabilities by Leveraging Distributed Cognition among Caregivers and Clients. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 13(5-6) (December 2004)
