Experimental evaluation of an interactive workspace for helping the visually impaired in learning linear algebra

Abstract

A framework and a workspace were designed to allow visually impaired students to practice linear algebra in an independent, convenient, interactive and accessible way. This improved the students’ self-assurance and motivated them to learn more linear algebra topics compared to traditional methods. In this paper, the workspace is evaluated experimentally. Experiments with increasing level of complexity were performed by six visually impaired participants to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfiability of the workspace. The time taken by the student to complete the exercise was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the workspace, the number of errors of the participant was used to evaluate the efficiency, whereas a level from 1 to 5 was used to evaluate satisfiability. The results, analyzed using T-test, showed that the proposed system is more effective, efficient and satisfactory than conventional systems especially when it comes to more complex experiments.