JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) include several disorders such as Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Dysgraphia, and the children with these SpLD receive special education. However, the studies and the educational material so far focus mainly on one specific disorder.

Objective:

This study’s primary goal is to develop comprehensive training material for different types of SpLD, with five serious games addressing different aspects of the SpLD. The second focus is measuring the impact of adaptive difficulty level adjustment in the children’s and their educators’ usability and technology acceptance perception. Receiving feedback from the children and their educators and refining the games according to their suggestions have also been essential in this two-phase study.

Methods:

Ten SpLD educators and 23 children with different types of SpLD tested the prototypes of the five serious games (i.e., Word game, Memory game, Category game, Space game, and Math game), gave detailed feedback, answered the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) questionnaires, and applied think-aloud protocols during gameplay.

Results:

The games’ standard and adaptive versions were analyzed in terms of average playtime and the number of false answers. Detailed analyses of the interviews, with word clouds and player performances, were also provided. The TAM questionnaires’ average and mean values, box plots of each data acquisition session for the children and the educators were also reported via SUS and TAM questionnaires. TAM Results of the educators had an average of 8.41 out of 10 with a standard deviation 0.87 in the first interview, while having an average of 8.71 out of 10 with a standard deviation of 0.64 in the second interview. The children had an average of 9.07 out of 10 with a standard deviation of 0.56 in the first interview.

Conclusions:

Both the educators and the children with SpLD enjoyed playing the games, gave positive feedback, and suggested new ways for improvement. The results showed that these games provide thorough training material for different types of SpLD with personalized and tailored difficulty systems. The final version of the proposed games was confirmed to become part of the special education centers’ supplementary curriculum and training materials, enabling new enhancements and improvements possible in the future. Clinical Trial: This study was performed by two participant groups —students and their educators. This study was not designed as a clinical trial but as a two-phase usability study for the Master’s thesis of the first author, supervised by the corresponding author. The Ethical Approval of Research has been approved by the Middle East Technical University Human Subjects Ethics Committee (ID of the permission: 28620816/398). The participants, or their parents, if they are children, were informed both with verbal and written communication about the purpose of the study, possible benefits of the study to children with SpLD, and the voluntary nature of participation.