Screening Program for Learning Difficulties in Arabic

Speaking Students: Design Considerations for

Educational Interfaces

Areej Al-Wabil

, Amandeep Dhir

, Hessah Al-Musaaed

and Maha Al-Sheaha

Information Technology Department, College of Computer Science, King Saud University,

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Institute of Behavioral Science, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki,

Helsinki, Finland

Special Education Department, College of Education, King Saud University,

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Special Education Department, College of Education, Taiba University,

Madina, Saudi Arabia

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to detail the creation process of a screening

program for Learning Difficulties (LDs), with the goal of alleviating distrac-

tions in the interface while retaining essential elements for measuring cognitive

abilities and behavioral responses. The program is designed to screen general

populations of children ages between 4 and 9 years –with and without Learning

Difficulties- and measures five cognitive abilities. Design considerations for ac-

cessibility and usability in each component are described. Particular emphasis

in the design of this screening system is given to the cognitive effort involved in

interacting with the forms, which are affected by the interface's complexity and

the navigation structure (i.e. breadth and depth of the information architecture).

The assumption was that focusing on designing interfaces that are intuitive and

accessible for individuals with LDs would facilitate access to a wider popula-

tion of children who do not have any LDs or have limited proficiency in inter-

acting with computers because the program was intended for launching across

the geographical region of Saudi Arabia, in metropolitan cities as well as rural

areas.

1 Introduction

The emergence of mobile computing and pervasive systems such as mobile phones,

handheld games and laptops have transformed the life of many kids around the world.

In recent years, technology has become an essential part of the learning process; how-

ever, children are not the same when it comes to learning aspects in any classroom

and non-classroom contexts. Some children face problems in their learning due to

Learning Difficulties (LD) or cognitive disabilities that that are caused due to biologi-

cal factors [1]. Children having LDs perform significantly below than average in their

academic career because of the difficulties they have acquired since their birth [2].

Furthermore, LDs often lead to reduced development of the social, academic and

Al-Wabil A., Dhir A., Al-Musaaed H. and Al-Sheaha M..

Screening Program for Learning Difﬁculties in Arabic Speaking Students: Design Considerations for Educational Interfaces.

DOI: 10.5220/0004100600670078

In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Interaction Design in Educational Environments (IDEE-2012), pages 67-78

ISBN: 978-989-8565-17-4

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

practice oriented abilities [3].

At present there are several different definitions for learning difficulties. [3] point-

ed out that often researchers find it problematic to define the group of general learn-

ing difficulties. Due to which, many prefer not to distinguish between the subgroups

whose cut-offs are not clear. Manifestations of Learning Difficulties include continu-

ous clue seeking, poor verbal memory, lack of confidence, social and emotional skills,

underdeveloped logical reasoning, abstract thinking and motor [4, 5, 7]. Children with

learning difficulties have different profiles [6] or specific profiles that are different

from others [1]. Even though children with LD have different profiles they can still

exhibit some common signaling features namely slower cognitive development and

poor problem solving skills [8], low self-esteem [9], possess fear of making mistakes

and exhibit unacceptable behavior [4], lack confidence on decision making, problem

in grasping and remembrance of abstract concepts, difficulty in obtaining instruction

and keeping the learning, dependence on peers for obtaining information and taking

actions and higher chances of getting distracted due to environment around them [1,4,

5, 6, 9,10]. Cognitive abilities have direct impact on the learning in any classroom and

non-classroom environment. Evidence from behavioral and educational sciences indi-

cates that early diagnosis and intervention could be key to achieving greater inde-

pendence in learning [11]. Psychologists, neurologists and educational researchers

have concluded that early detection of the learning difficulties is essential for the fu-

ture of suffering children, their parents and schools. Children suffering from LD can

only be provided with support if their learning disabilities can be identified. To solve

this problem, screening techniques are used in practice. Educational psychologists,

neurologists and highly trained educators use different screening techniques for ex-

ample, Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children[12] and Woodcock-Johnson Tests of

Cognitive Abilities-III[13]

Existing techniques and instruments for performing the process of diagnosis and

screening of various LDs is both time consuming and resource intensive. The main

challenges in performing the detection of learning difficulties is that it requires manu-

al process of testing which is often lengthy and tedious, highly trained professionals,

cost and time intensive. In order to counter the challenges of cost effectiveness and

large scale screening, educational researchers and practitioners have coined the need

for developing computer based screening software that can diagnose LDs among chil-

dren on a large scale. However, this goal is not easy because all screening related

needs must be delivered in a computer-based format so as to ensure flexibility, con-

sistency and adaptability [14, 15]. In this end, educational practitioners have argued

the need for developing automated screening software’s for the early diagnosis of LD.

This kind of automated screening should be capable of performing large scale screen-

ing tests without the need of highly trained neurologists, psychologists or educators.

Overall goal of such automated screening software is to perform large-scale parallel

diagnose experiments of large number of participants in cost effective and timely

manner. It has been estimated that more than 10% of the world’s population suffers

from some kind of disability [16]. This means that the spectrum of users who are go-

ing to benefit with the research on developing screening software for the diagnoses of

the LD’s in young children is enormous. However, Arabic speaking users are not yet

addressed by academic or industrial research. To date, to our best knowledge there do

not exist any computer-based screening software normalized for Arabic-speaking

children, apart from CoPS which was specific to Kuwait and limited in its scope of

assesment. There has been increase in the development of educational software’s in

Arabic language however, remedial and screening programs for children with LDs is

scarce in number [17]. Furthermore the heterogeneity of research on developing

screening software for the diagnosis of LD has resulted in the need for introducing

standardizations or design considerations for educational interfaces aimed at children

with LDs. Design considerations for educational software developed with Arabic in-

terfaces have been reported in studies that examine visual aspects of the design

[18,19]. However, there is an inadequate understanding of design considerations spe-

cific for screening software aimed at children with LDs in non-English context, par-

ticularly language and cultural considerations. The discipline of Human Computer

Interaction (HCI) can play an important role in developing screening software, quality

standards and formulating design considerations for educational interfaces aimed at

children with LD’s. The role of HCI becomes even more important because design

considerations and standards must be understandable and meet the needs and expecta-

tions of the software designers. Through this paper, we would like to generate a popu-

lar sentiment among the academic and industry circles that studying design considera-

tion for any educational interface aimed at children with LD’s is essential not only for

an individual but for the whole community and society.

2 Software for Children with Learning Difficulties

The popularity of educational technology has grown so high that children with and

without disabilities (e.g. children with LD) are now using it for their betterment. Chil-

dren with LD face difficulties in their memory, attention, perception, concentration

and logical reasoning. Due to which, more focus should be given to the alternative

forms of representing problem, text or any abstract concept. Visualizations often at-

tract children with LD’s[1]. This very need has resulted in the development of ad-

vanced educational interface technologies such as virtual reality and tangible interfac-

es. Recently, academic research has witnessed the increasing interest in exploring

advanced interface technologies for aiding LDs among young children.

The concept of virtual reality has been much explored as an educational technolo-

gy that aide the learning and educational experience through entertainment [23, 24,

25]. Tangible interfaces have been expanded in the domain of education technology

by creating systems that are immersed in our physical environment. Tangible inter-

faces have enabled educators to go beyond the traditional screen-based applications

for PC’s [26]. The use of tangible interfaces as means for educational technology that

supports learning for children with special needs is based on the fundamental theories

governing human behavior. For example,[27, 28] argued that tangible interfaces for

educational purposes are based on the behavioral learning theories and traditional use

of desktop computers. Similarly constructivist-learning theory states that there should

be more control on the learning when tangible interfaces are used. [7, 20, 27] investi-

gated the use of multi-sensory and tangible interfaces in order to enhance the learning

experience among LD children. [29, 30] have concluded that multi-sensory experi-

ence provided by such tangible interfaces has a positive impact on the cognitive and

learning abilities of LD children. [6] has provided the guidelines for product designers

who are interested in developing educational technology and other ICT that enhances

learning among young children. Some of the salient features of these guidelines in-

clude considering a kinesthetic approach for enhancing the learning experience

through physical activity, increasing the use of visualization compared to text so that

children with LD can grasp the abstract concepts easily, using different forms of rep-

resentation for presenting the information to young children, and instructional scaf-

folding.

3 Screening Software

The majority of existing research on developing screening software for identifying

children at risk of having LDs is targeted towards the developed world. These existing

screening programs focus only on subsets of difficulties that constitutes LDs, hence

they possess only limited focus and do not really address the real problem. Most

common difficulties addressed by existing screening program are attention, phonolog-

ical processing deficits and short term memory problems [31]. Screening programs

are meant for providing comprehensive assessment and enabling educators with ro-

bust indication about the specific learning deficits. However, it has been seen that

most screening programs partially address the problem of identifying children at risk

of having LDs and lack an element of comprehensive assessment. This resulted in the

limited applicability and effectiveness of existing screening programs. At present,

there exists only one screening program for Arabic speaking children named CoPS

that has been developed based on normative data of 4-8year old children population in

Kuwait. Due to its limited scope of cognitive abilities and normative testing, its ap-

plicability to wider Arabic speaking populations was a concern once it was launched

as a screening tool by practitioners in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there exist gaps in

our understanding on the kind of LDs present in the Arabic population especially the

Saudi Arabian population.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has experienced the increasing need for developing

standardized screening instruments for the detection of LDs. There has been several

efforts in this regard, however due to large number of schools, districts and education

governing bodies, screening instruments are pretty diversified and these are mainly

performed by the specialist in LDs. Every school is using their own battery of manual

tests and educational psychologists do not posses any formal or standardized method

of assessing LDs in young children. In order to bridge the existing gap in understand-

ing the LDs present in Arabic population and develop a reliable screening program for

Saudi population, a research project was launched. The aim of this research project

was to evaluate the feasibility of developing a computer based screening program that

can facilitate the normative assessment among Saudi population. The screening tool

developed through this project is very practical and convenient for the educators so

that they can screen significant number of LDs among the young children aged be-

tween 4 to 9 years. Computer based screening is effective compared to manual

screening process not only because of its cost effective nature but due to the chances

of greater recognition of cases than with voluntary reporting of LDs by parents and

educators. In the first phase of this project, we have developed the computer-based

assessments so as to collect data for developing normative testing. Additionally, nor-

mative testing program was developed keeping in mind the age-related cut-off scores

indicating low, average and high ability skills. These computerized screening pro-

grams are available on the computers in the public schools so that children between 4-

9 years can participate in such tests. This arrangement also ensures that useful quanti-

tative data is collected in an easy and cost efficient manner, which can also alert edu-

cators about any possible LDs among the participating students.

4 Test Design

In order to access the cognitive abilities of children, a prerequisite for the diagnosis of

the LDs, children should be engaged in set of tasks that can potentially tap their cog-

nitive abilities. However, due consideration should also be given to address the acces-

sibility and usability of the computer-based screening program. The first step in the

preparation of the test tasks was to study the existing literature on ability tests on LDs

in Arabic. We performed a thorough review of these existing ability tests and calcu-

lated a list of 85 tasks that were essential for our proposed screening program. Due to

the larger number of test tasks, we decided to organize the tasks into key categories

which were short memory, perception, language, attention and verbal and non-verbal

reasoning. The screening of the short-term memory requires a battery of tests that can

effectively evaluate the child’s capacity to retain and manipulate the information for

short and long intervals. The abilities related to verbal and non-verbal reasoning were

tested through the use of figures, words and visio-spatial tasks. The language compo-

nent was tested through direct assessment of age-appropriate phonological processing

tasks, as well as grammatical structures uttered by the screening program and a block

of sentences are visually presented (in form of pictures) so as to depict the actual

event described in the event. The task related to finding the semantic similarities actu-

ally tap the comprehension skills of the children with LDs. Auditory and visual atten-

tion were assessed with stimuli designed for interactive responses by the child.

5 Design Considerations of Educational Interfaces

In this section, we describe visual and interaction design considerations and include

example(s) of interfaces designed within components of our screening program.

5.1 Visual Short Term Memory Screening

In this screening task, the child is exposed to a pre-defined number of images for a

duration corresponding to the level of progress in the program, and then is requested

to select the images that he/she viewed to assess visual working memory abilities.

Instructions are presented to the child in spoken form as well as written in a speech

cloud on the right side of the interface. Selection of elements on the screen was sup-

ported with consistent hover feedback by highlighting the element with a yellow bor-

der, and consistent selection feedback by highlighting the element with green border

as depicted in Figure 1. The screening program increases in difficulty by presenting

sets of images that are increasing in both quantity and complexity. Thus, a visual pro-

gress bar supported progress tracking in the screening task which was especially im-

portant for children with attention deficit problems.

Fig. 1. Interface Design for Memory Assessment.

A similar approach was adopted in measuring visual short-term memory with let-

ters, numbers, and words as shown in Figure 2.

Fig. 2. Visual Feedback and Progress Tracking.

5.2 Auditory Short Term Memory Screening

With auditory screening, it is essential to keep visual distraction at a minimum. Also,

since some children may have comorbid difficulties such as attention deficit disor-

ders, the presentation of audio stimuli should be preceded by a note or pause so that

interaction or presentation of the tested materials is initiated by the child's action of

clicking or indicating that he/she is ready because audio stimuli is presented only once

and not repeated in the session. The design of the interface for recording responses to

the audio stimuli also has its own considerations. For example, in an exercise for en-

tering numbers that were spoken to the child without being presented visually, the

keypad for entering the numbers is presented on the screen and numbers' entry from

the keyboard is disabled to control for variability in numeric keypad designs as shown

in Figure 3. This was especially important because this program was designed to col-

lect normalized data for the Saudi population and it was deployed for use across the

kingdom using the existing labs in schools, which had varied facilities, and the de-

signs of keyboards could not be controlled and kept consistent. Therefore much of the

character-entry screening exercises involved on-screen interface.

Hover Feed-

back

Selection Feedback

Double-Emphasis

(Audio 'click' and

color)

Progress

Bar

Instructions:

spoken and

written

Fig. 3. Auditory Attention Assessment.

5.3 Assessing Upper Limits of the Child’s Cognitive Ability

An approach for presenting five levels of increasing difficulty was adopted in the de-

sign of tasks throughout the program. The program was adaptive in the sense that

three consecutive errors would consider the following level beyond the cognitive abil-

ity of the child and automatically record the score and move the child to the next lev-

el. Increasing the levels of difficulties varied according to the type of skill being

measured. For example, in visual discrimination and number recognition, the two

tasks for levels 1 and 5 are shown in the figure below to depict the contrast in com-

plexity for the measuring the child’s ability. Complexity increased in the number of

digits and the similarity of visual appearance between the correct answer and the dis-

tracters. All other visual design factors and auditory description were kept constant to

control for confounding factors. Another example for visual discrimination in images

is shown the visual image with the two tasks in levels 1 and 5 as depicted in Figure 4.

Level 1 (min) Level 5 (max)

Numeric

Visual Image

Fig. 4. Designing consistent interfaces for increased complexity in cognitive tasks.

5.4 Language Considerations and Familiarity in Visual Designs

Design elements in the program’s interface and in the spoken instructions were con-

sidered to reflect familiar objects in the local context. Moreover, images that were

Area for visual feed-

back of responses

entered by the child

Interface Numeric

Keypad to control for

variability in key-

board designs

Instructions: spoken

only in auditory

screening. Speech

cloud not visible

related to words that need to be identified by the user were were carefully selected to

avoid ambiguity such as the images chosen for the task depicted in Figure 5. The

word ‘camel’ in the local context can be expressed in two words (لبإ) and ( مجل ) and

both of them end with the same letter, so the answer for finding the shared ‘last letter’

of the three images would be valid whether the child considered the first or second

word for identifying the camel.

Fig. 5. Selection of words and matching images.

5.5 Inclusion of Animated Elements

Since accessibility guidelines suggest avoiding animated elements that distract users,

it was ensured in the design that animations were included only in essential areas of

the interface. For example, a timed task involving visual exploration of a grid of

numbers to search for specific numbers included an animated timer so that users are

aware of the remaining time (Case A in the figure below). This inclusion of an ani-

mated element was based on the assumption that benefit gained from the visual feed-

back obtained from this animation outweighs the distraction that it may incur. Moreo-

ver, it was believed that if the animated timer in the way it was designed (i.e. minimal

design and placement in secondary location on the screen) distracted the users then

this type of user would be more prone to be distracted from maintaining their focus on

the task itself (i.e. selecting the numbers from the grid) and this distraction would

consequently trigger the user to re-focus rather than remain distracted. In contrast,

when the cognitive ability being measured was related to non-visual abilities,

animation was avoided as in the example in Case B of Figure 6. In this series of 5

tasks, the child is requested to select the number representing the number of hits that

he/she hears in the activity of hammering a nail. Although the action can be animated

for realism, it was kept static so that attention is directed to the auditory stimuli and

not supported by visual clues to help the child keep track of the number of hits.

6 Evaluations and Deployment

User acceptance testing was conducted on a sample of children ranging between 4 to

9 years of age. Consent was obtained from the parents and school of the participating

With animation (Case A) Without animation (Case B)

Fig. 6. Animated elements on interfaces.

child. Sessions were recorded using Tobii Studio software which measure the visual

attention of users, interaction logs, as well as their behavioral measures such as time

on task, and patterns of mouse movements, and backtracking actions in completing

tasks. Key findings from these evaluations were related to the timing of presentation

of stimuli, visibility of elements in some interfaces, synchronization of audio and vis-

ual cues, and lack of progress tracking. These issues were addressed in the final ver-

sion of the software before the testing was launched across the country. The program

was deployed for use in public schools to collect normative data of cognitive profiles

of children in the 4 to 9 year old segment of the population in five regions in the

kingdom to ensure geographical coverage of regions in the northern, southern, eastern

and western regions of Saudi Arabia. These regions and the size of the samples in

which data was collected are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Normative Data Collection.

Region Sample size

Central region (Riyadh) 188

Eastern Region (Damman) 243

Western Region (Jeddah) 24

Southern (Jazan) 157

Northern (Jouf) 166

Total Sample for Normative Data 778

At the deployment phase, an online support system was established to address

technical difficulties that teachers in public schools would encounter. It was observed

that enquiries and technical problems experienced by users that were related to opera-

tional issues such as installation and exporting the data exceeded the usability prob-

lems reported. This suggests that the design of the tasks matched to a large extent the

needs of the users and the expectations of designers in terms of appropriateness in

accommodating the variability in technical proficiency and familiarity with automated

systems.

7 Conclusions

Designing interactions in educational contexts needs to take into account the abilities

and needs of the target user population. This becomes more critical when the system

is designed for a heterogeneous population that includes individuals with and without

LDs. To examine design considerations specific to educational interfaces for screen-

ing individuals with LDs, we drew upon usability and accessibility guideline adher-

ence in a case study involving the design of an automated screening software program

developed for Arabic-speaking children in the 4 to 9 age bracket. It was found that

design considerations were crucial for ensuring accurate screening of cognitive abili-

ties. Furthermore, usability assessments in the deployment phase indicated that de-

signing with considerations specific for individuals with LDs facilitated a more acces-

sible and usable system for a wider population thus supporting a universal design ap-

proach for this context of use.

Acknowledgements

This project is supported by a grant from the Deanship of Scientific Research in Tai-

bah University, Al-Madinah Al-Munawarah, Saudi Arabia. We also acknowledge the

support of the Malaz Scientific and Medical Colleges Center provided by grant RGP-

VPP-157 for the Software and Knowledge Engineering Group and the support of the

College of Computer and Information Sciences in King Saud University.

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