Designing and supporting cooperative and ubiquitous learning systems for people with special needs

Abstract

Cooperative work in schools helps students to learn behaviour norms, tolerate their partners and educators, and make decisions or accept the decisions from other people. In case of students with cognitive disabilities, cooperative work contributes to the socialization of the students by improving the communication and the integration in the classroom. New technologies foster guided and cooperative learning through didactic exercises and educational activities that adapt the educative context to user's needs and abilities. For this objective, the design must take into account non-funcional requirements for provide a future adaptation. This paper presents the design of one of such systems and the main decisions made in order to improve usability, adaptation, flexibility, and accessibility in ubiquitous spaces of it. The general architecture of the system and the platform that supports the development process of its software for educational activities are described in a real case study. © Springer-Verlag 2009.