Effects of integrating augmented reality in early childhood special education

Abstract

Various research studies showed the praiseful impact of technology tools in the education process of the special kids. The intention of this comparative study was to explore how Augmented Reality (AR) based educational application would support mild and moderate Intellectually Disabled (ID) children of age 5-10. Eight ID students from a Block Resource Center in Kerala, India were participated in this study. They were divided into two groups. Children with hyperactivity were selected as experimental group, and they had extra support from AR-based tool via smartphone. The control group students were trained by using conventional method. After measuring the parameters such as learning outcome, response to the learning material, learning time and memory capacity, the data has been analyzed. From the analysis results, it noticed that the participants from the experimental group exhibited improvements in all the parame-ters than those in the control group. In addition to the experi-ment, a survey was conducted among their parents and the re-source teachers to know their feedback about the effectiveness of the application. The observed parameters and the survey results indicate that the implementation of AR-based educational ap-plications in early childhood special education system is worth to explore further.