A Game Based Learning Approach to Enrich Special Education in Sri Lanka

Abstract

In this fast moving world, providing equal access to information and knowledge to everybody is restricted due to specific groups of students who are not capable to engage in learning in a regular manner because of their physical, mental or psychological disabilities. These kinds of students require individual attention and special assistance from their parents and teachers in learning process. They might benefit from some other special learning techniques provided as learning aids rather than conventional learning methods. Since Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based learning is a novel approach which integrates learning with computing, this research is intended to explore the relevancy of ICT based education for enhancing the learning effectiveness of students with special needs. A few game based activities have been developed considering both functional and non-functional requirements, gathered through discussions had with doctors and teachers in special education. These activities focus on basic concepts of three subject areas as Colour, Number and Language. In order to evaluate the performance improvement, two tests were carried out as ‘pre-test’ and ‘post-test’ for a sample of students with the developed activities. Number of levels completed by each student, number of mistakes made during the game and time taken to finish a game were measured throughout the user evaluation phase. With this experiment, it was proven that ICT can be used as a driving tool to enhance the learning effectiveness in special education domain.International Journal on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions 2014 07 (2)DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4038/icter.v7i2.7157