ICT SUPPORTED APPROACHES TO AUTISM

Ileana Hamburg

Institute for Work and Technology, FH Gelsenkirchen, Munscheidstraße 14, 45886 Gelsenkirchen, Germany

Keywords: Autism disorder ASD, ICT, Social skills, Virtual communities of practice VCoP.

Abstract: Autism is a disorder that affects human skills and behaviour essentially. The use of ICT can support educa-

tion and rehabilitation of people with autism and also teachers, parents and social workers benefit from us-

ing ICT. ICT and particularly the Internet support the creation of Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs)

as a promising approach for learning, housing reviews of research evidence and engaging persons working

in the ASD field to share practical knowledge and to make practical innovations. In this paper we present

aspects of training and cooperation for people with autism particularly by using ICT and VCoPs and give an

example of a successful project.

1 INTRODUCTION

In Germany as in many other European countries

and in Turkey, the number of young people with

autism disorder (ASD) and the autism awareness has

increased considerably within the last two decades.

Autism is a disorder that affects human behaviour

and skills essentially (e.g. social interactions, ability

to express ideas and feelings, to communicate and to

establish relations with others). The way children

learn, as social beings, to take care of

themselves

and to participate in the community generally has

life-long effects. Therefore, training approaches

which make use of new information and communi-

cation technologies (ICT) and methods to cooperate

are necessary.

The use of ICT can support the education and re-

habilitation of people with autism. It could enable

learners to communicate easier and this is helpful

particularly for children with autism, which are the

main target group of one of our projects to partici-

pate in lessons and learn more specifically. Learners

with autism are able to accomplish tasks while

working at their own pace. Increased ICT confi-

dence among students motivates them to use the

internet at home for schoolwork and leisure. It is

important to find ways of engaging this group be-

cause pupils with autism or Asperger syndrome are

20 or more times more likely to be excluded from

school than their classmates (Barnard, Prior and Pot-

ter, 2000).

But engaging pupils with autism in learning and

using interactive ICT media (i.e. white boards)

which have a positive effect on teaching and learn-

ing is difficult, taking into consideration the sensory

disruption of these pupils, atypical learning styles,

environmental needs and lack of social skills (Hersh

and Hamburg, 2004; Myles, et al., 2004).

In this context, the teachers and social workers

benefit from the use of ICT enabling them to com-

municate electronically with colleagues, thereby

reducing their isolation, improving their skills, as

well as accessing and using best practices and online

resources for their work.

ICT and particularly the internet also support co-

operation e.g. the creation of Virtual Communities

of Practice (VCoPs) as a promising approach for

learning, housing reviews of research evidence and

engaging persons to share practical knowledge and

to make practical innovations.

Communities of Practice (CoPs) (Wenger, 1998)

are social-oriented cooperations where practitioners

(i.e. trainers, social workers, doctors, parents, person

with autism) are held together in a CoP by a com-

mon interest in a body of knowledge. CoPs are

driven by a desire and by the need to learn through

practice and social participation, to share problems,

experiences, insights, templates, tools. CoPs address

not only the acquisition of technical skills for a de-

termined practice but also social and informal as-

pects of sharing and developing knowledge.

In this paper we present aspects of training for

people with autism particularly by using ICT (part

2), VCoPs (part 3) and give as an example our EU-

512

Hamburg I..

ICT SUPPORTED APPROACHES TO AUTISM.

DOI: 10.5220/0003135905120516

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF-2011), pages 512-516

ISBN: 978-989-8425-34-8

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Learning partnership Bringing New Approaches to

Education of Autistic Children in Turkey and Euro-

pean Countries http://www.autism-newapproach.org

(part 4). Another on-going project is also shortly

presented.

2 ICT SUPPORTED SOCIAL

SKILLS TRAINING

Social skills training can be illustrated by the phrase

“teaching a person how to navigate social reality”

(www.iancommunity.org/.../social_skills_interventio

ns) which is a very complex and multifaceted field.

Generally, there exists limited knowledge in the

field of social development and, as a consequence,

also referring to autistic children. A starting point in

this direction could be a list with issues of social

impairments of ASD pupils like a lack of interest in

initiating social interactions, a lack of understanding

of emotions and how they are expressed, poor eye

contact, which could be improved by social training.

Pupils with ASD need social skills training be-

ginning from childhood with basic social skills and

continuing in adulthood turning into complex social

skills required for living and working in a commu-

nity. Social skills are necessary also for the individ-

ual success of pupils, for their social acceptance and

integration in schools, workplaces and society

(Myles and Simpson, 2001).

Computers and other ICT media like video,

software or virtual-reality programmes teaching

complex social skills such as recognition of emo-

tions in facial expressions and tone of voice can

support social skills training (Hagiwara and Myles

1999; Hamburg, et al., 2007).

We use videos in our project e.g. having a child

watch him- or herself performing a social task or

role-playing a social situation and then analyzing

what is well done and what not. The videos can help

pupils to interpret body language, to learn greeting

visitors.

Virtual rehabilitation (Hamburg and Ionescu,

2009) with new graphics technologies and tele-

rehabilitation supporting more efficient services fa-

cilitate the treatment of more people are important

developments particularly for ASD. It is expected

that this area which combines multidisciplinary

technological fields like virtual reality, bio-

electronics, and natural human-computer interfaces

will “revolutionize” many special treatment units in

the coming years.

In trainings using virtual reality, socially interac-

tive robots can be used to set up practice “social in-

teractions” for individuals with autism.

As another ICT tool we consider interactive

white boards as best practice for children with au-

tism. Unfortunately teacher skills and strategies in

this context are missing. So in our project we will

start first with some research work about advantages

and disadvantages of white boards and then develop

one-day training for Initial Teaching students.

Referring to the ICT based learning methods, E-

Learning combined with traditional instructor-led

training offers more efficiency for learning social

skills providing flexibility in terms of time, place,

adaptation of the learning material, audience and

individualized (customized) content (Hamburg,

2010).

There are also disadvantages of ICT based train-

ing particularly by using the internet like bandwidth

limitations for certain media types and assistive

technologies necessary for people also having other

disabilities, initial development costs which can be

more expensive than development costs for print-

based or instructor led training and longer develop-

ment time. In order to be efficient, the learners must

be self-directed learners and comfortable using the

Web.

One barrier that hinders the learning of social

skills could be the poor range and quality of provi-

sion in some areas which means that many disabled

adults are still not given the opportunities they need

to learn basic social skills. It seems that these oppor-

tunities depend on the commitment and initiative of

individuals rather than on a clearly defined right of

access.

A second problem is that ASD requires good

specialist teaching, which is not available to many

learners because of the shortage of skilled and quali-

fied teachers. Some learners require specialized

equipment, but many teachers are unfamiliar with

the range of special available software or with the

technology used (e.g. white boards). Other learners

require transport to the place of learning, more ac-

cessible accommodation, timetabling which avoids

fatigue, or a personal assistant who is sometimes

missing.

Also the curriculum for social skills is insuffi-

ciently flexible to enable all learners to build new

skills which are required in connection with many

economic and technical changes for example to

teach them how to use the Web and how to commu-

nicate through media. Many learners need continu-

ous learning opportunities in a community; it could

be realised by a combination of formal and informal

education methods (including different evenings,

activities of social and health services, etc).

ICT SUPPORTED APPROACHES TO AUTISM

513

The teaching of social skills should be (if possi-

ble) integrated with the rest of people’s lives. There

is little Web-based learning material for adults that

is age-appropriate and sufficiently challenging. It is

important that each student is involved in deciding

which skills to develop and has an individualised

learning plan, built on previous learning experiences

and experience with the ICT.

3 VCoPs

A Community of Practice (CoP) may provide a use-

ful perspective on learning, information, knowledge

sharing and creation. In a CoP, a group of people

come together who share a concern, a set of prob-

lems, expertise and/or a passion for a topic. “Com-

munities of practice are formed by people who en-

gage in a process of collective learning in a shared

domain of human endeavour”. Some research

pointed out that knowledge developed in Communi-

ties of Practice is important for understanding differ-

ent types of knowledge and how knowledge devel-

ops in different contexts. These distinctions are im-

portant when processes of learning and knowledge

development in SMEs are analysed.

The design of CoPs also is important. Some

principles of “designing for aliveness” which can

guide organizations wishing to start a CoP are ex-

plained here. These we have followed in our current

projects (see part 4):

 Design for evolution e.g. design elements should

be combined in a way that they may act as catalysts

for a natural evolution to a life-long learning ori-

ented CoP,

 Keep an open dialog between inside and outside

perspectives of the CoP because the latter can help

community members to see new possibilities and act

effectively,

 Consider different levels of participation for the

members of the CoP (leadership roles, core active

group, rare participants, etc.)

 Develop public and private community spaces

 Create a rhythm and rules for the community

Internet technologies extend the interactions within

Communities of Practice beyond geographical limi-

tations and enable the building of virtual CoPs

(VCoPs). These communities free their members

from constraints of time and space.

Sometimes a transition takes place from a face-

to-face to a Virtual CoP, in order to reach more con-

tinuous levels of information sharing. In this case it

is important to choose adequate software to support

the VCoP.

The current generation of web-based technology

(Web 2.0) which is not mainly a technical revolution

but first of all a social one, has a vast potential to

create prospering environments for emerging Com-

munities of Practice.

The lack of face-to-face contact within a Com-

munity of Practice can often be an advantage be-

cause it helps to suppress traditional group norm

behaviour. On the other hand, it remains an open

question whether a community of practice where

face-to-face contact is entirely excluded can be sus-

tained over a long period. In our project we are go-

ing to support both virtual and face-to-face contacts

in the community of practice under development.

Despite the great potential, there are also limita-

tions of current technologies in relation to Virtual

Communities of Practice: because virtual commu-

nity infrastructure can be set up across cultures via

www, cultural and language differences can hinder

the desired fluidity of activities in communities of

practice.

Some positive aspects referring to people with

ASD, which could be influenced by CoPs, are the

following (Engert, et al., 2008):

 Improving the learning curve of new staff

 Supporting new ideas for products and services

 Reducing rework and preventing “reinventions

of the wheel”

 Responding more rapidly to people with autism

needs and inquiries

 Development of friendly repositories of knowl-

edge and good practices

There exist some initiatives in building VCoPs to fill

the gaps in rehabilitation and training in the field of

ASD. For example, for many social problems there

is a gap in the availability of proven evidence-based

strategies (Rosen, et al., 1999). A good solution for

social workers who need advice and also for sharing

knowledge and inventing new practical solutions are

VCoPs (Cook-Craig, 2008).

4 EXAMPLE

After having gained experience in the

GRUNDTVIG project BASKI aimed at the devel-

opment of a model of social basic skills for people

with learning disabilities, we continued our work in

the EU-Learning partnership Bringing New Ap-

proaches to Education of Autistic Children in Tur-

HEALTHINF 2011 - International Conference on Health Informatics

514

key and European Countries. The target groups of

the project are teachers and students of vocational

education, trainers working in special education cen-

tres, social workers, parents of autistic children and

last but not least children with autism. The partners

come from Austria, Germany, Spain and Turkey.

The main tasks of the project are:

 Surveys about autism and existing education

approaches in partner countries

 Discussions with experts in this context

 Research of successful methods and new ap-

proaches in training of autistic children, trainers and

parents

 Structured interviews with trainers, students,

parents

 Development of a common approach for the

training of target groups

 Development of a Community of Practice with

virtual activities (VCoP) involving autistic citizens,

trainers, doctors, parents, social workers supported

by a Moodle platform to develop training resources

 Pilot runs in Turkey.

Some of the questions for the structured interviews

with trainers are the following:

 Have you ever heard of “Autism” before starting

to work in this organization?

 Have you ever interacted with an autistic child

before working in this organization? If so, could you

explain the level of your interaction?

 Do you have any difficulty in training autistic

children?

 Who puts you under stress the most while train-

ing autistic children?

 To what extent can you solve the problem you

have faced?

 What are your attitudes towards people?

 Your opinions about your job

 Do you know the ICT supported methods and

techniques used in the education of autistic children?

 Do you know supportive therapy methods used

in the education of autistic children?

 Can you easily obtain the written sources and

materials about autism?

 Do you think the autistic children should be led

to the vocational training?

 In your opinion, what kind of occupations can

autistic children be led to?

We started now the development of a VCoP with

trainers, social workers and autistic children recom-

mended by trainers, doctors not only from partner

countries but also from other European countries.

The access to documents, discussions and training

modules for achieving social skills is supported by a

Moodle-based platform (Dougiamas, 2006) because

of the accessibility and flexibility of this tool. The

choice of Moodle was based, firstly, on an analysis

of some open source virtual learning environments

(VLEs) on the criteria of sustainability and viability

(that influence the costs for adoption and mainte-

nance of the system) and the pedagogical rationale

of the environment. Secondly, we decided to use

Moodle because some of the partners already had

good experience and competence with this environ-

ment.

Another European VCoP and some cultural

learning sequences addressed to people with com-

munication disabilities particularly ASD, will be

created within the European Grundtvig Learning

partnership CLINTEV, starting in these months.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In our research work and projects we advocate the

help ICT can give to persons with autism particu-

larly to overcome their communication difficulties

and to achieve social skills so this person can be

included in lessons, in social and working environ-

ments. We are confident that learning in CoPs will

make a positive contribution to spreading best prac-

tices in ASD and find new innovative solutions, but

creating sustainable CoPs is a difficult and complex

task. In our future work we will create a frame for

disseminating existing VCoPs in Europe and abroad

and for creating new ones to fulfil existing gaps in

research evidence and training not only in the field

of ASD but also other disorders.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper describes some work within the Learning

partnership Bringing New Approaches to Education

of Autistic Children in Turkey and European Coun-

tries supported by the EU within the Leonardo da

Vinci sub-programme and promotes the Grundtvig

Learning partnership CLINTEV.

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