Abstract
Reading is an important competency to be developed for children in the first years of elementary school. Reading becomes a mechanism that allows the children to interact with the world and identify their characteristics. Dyslexia is one learning disability frequently manifested in elementary school, and to identify it, teachers require extra educative resources, in particular educational applications. This work proposes a process model to design and develop educational applications considering the learning needs of children with dyslexia. It involves a user-centered approach because different perceptions of several actors are considered. The performance of the proposed model is explored in a case study and an evaluation, taking into account usability and accessibility factors.
TopIntroduction
The educational applications also known as educational apps, they are interactive applications that promote the use multimedia content notably under mobile devices easy to use beyond the classroom walls in the education in schools (Ciullo et al. 2018). The software for this educational application encompasses a variety of forms, platforms, and purposes. These applications can be used in several domains for example to teach individual letter names, phonics and grammar in a certain language (Dore et al. 2019). Other educational applications introduce mathematical concepts for all grades or are aimed at helping to develop logical skills (Herro 2013). Nowadays, the elementary school has created inclusive programs in order to offer educative support for children with learning disable such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia (Zikl 2015) (Uloyol & Sahin 2014). These children require an efficient learning method, teachers using educative resources can innovative teaching methods specific to the context of children so that even they motivating differently and can be self-paced learning at the level that corresponds to their chronological age (Ciullo et al. 2018) (Mize et al. 2019a).
Nowadays, the elementary school has been created inclusive programs, which are dedicated offer support for children with learning disable such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia (Zikl 2015). This work is interesting in the study of dyslexia; this is a specialized term for a specific set of traits in the reading process that it falls under the general category of specific learning disability in reading. Someone with dyslexia may be identified with disabilities in basic reading skills, reading comprehension and reading fluency as dyslexia often affects all three aspects. Individuals with specialized training can offer remedial techniques for dyslexia in a highly structured, multisensory approach to teaching reading.
This work is interested in the study of dyslexia; this is a specialized term for a specific set of traits of reading disability. Dyslexia is related to reading difficulties frequently identified at elementary school (Cook, L. & Dakin, K. 2007). Some of most common learning difficulties related to dyslexia are: misunderstand words with similar pronunciation, poor reading comprehension, slowness in reading, difficulty identifying the letters, delay to memorize the numbers, the alphabet, the days of the week, colors and shapes. These kind of difficulties in general affect the academic performance of a child (Turner & Greaney, 2009), arising several learning issues that are reflected in behavior, socialization, academic desertion among others (Tamboer et al., 2016). A teacher at elementary school spends time to prepare educational resources and it becomes difficult to find specific educational content as a support to reading disability. The instructional design for teaching reading for children with dyslexia requires to prepare additional educational applications in order to help the students to achieve their learning needs and these strategies can be incorporated into the child's education.
An alternative solution is the use of educational applications as educational content to help reading according to the learning needs. In general, children at the school can use several technological resources as complementary support for learning activities, then children with learning disabilities require a larger diversity of resources in order to support the acquisition of knowledge (Dore et al. 2019) (Gaggi et al. 2012). In addition, when there are groups with a large number of students for the teachers are not always possible to offer a personal teaching. Then, the interactive applications can be an efficiently support to mitigate some issues of learning problem in particular for reading.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Dyslexia: Dyslexia is a learning disorder that affects your ability to read, spell, write, and speak. Kids who have it are often smart and hardworking, but they have trouble connecting the letters they see to the sounds those letters make.
Process Model: A software process model is a description of the sequence of activities carried out in an software engineering project, and the relative order of these activities. It provides a fixed generic framework that can be tailored to a specific project.
Accessibility: Accessibility in the sense considered here refers to the design of products, devices, services, interactive system, or application so as to be usable by people with disabilities.
Interaction Design Patterns: An interaction design pattern is a general repeatable solution to a commonly-occurring usability problem in interface design or interaction design. They specify interaction models that make it easier for users to understand an interface and accomplish their tasks.
User-Centered Approach: This approach requires a design which is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks, and environments; is driven and refined by user-centered evaluation; and addresses the whole user experience. The process involves users throughout the design and development process, and it is iterative. And finally, the team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives.
Usability: Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.
User Task: A user task is used to model work that needs to be done by a human actor. When the process execution arrives at such a User Task, a new task is created in the task list of the user(s) or group(s) assigned to that task.
Pedagogical Patterns: Deals with pedagogical problems regarding the practice of teaching and learning. s focus on practices that have been thoroughly tested and proven useful by several people in different contexts rather than on new ideas.