Open AccessImproving Motor Skills of Students with Disabilities via Engineering Education
Author(s) -
Sarah Morganc
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
proceedings of the ... ceea conference
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2371-5243
DOI - 10.24908/pceea.v0i0.12966
Subject(s) - session (web analytics) , psychology , robotics , robot , mathematics education , motor skill , baseline (sea) , special education , cognition , assistive technology , medical education , computer science , pedagogy , engineering , artificial intelligence , human–computer interaction , developmental psychology , political science , medicine , world wide web , law , neuroscience
Schools in Montreal have adopted variouskinds of technologies and programs to help students withlearning or speech impairments succeed based on one ofthe Quebec’s Education Minister’s mandates, notablythrough integrating these tools into the classroom. At LaSocieté des Handicapés du Québec, students (ages 3-18)get the opportunity to interact with robots by building andprograming them. The purpose of the study is to observehow teaching robotics can develop their motor skills orother cognitive abilities.Over the course of 12 weeks, students (ages 3-4)were given building instructions and kits, and asked tobuild and program their robots. Students with roboticsexperience were grouped and considered as a baseline.The other students were separated into two other groupsand had no prior experience. All three groups hadstudents with and without special needs. The study aimedto analyze how motor skills and various other abilitiesimproved over the 12 weeks in comparison to thechildren’s performance during the first session of theterm. The number of lessons required for the three groupsto reach similar results was also tracked. Overall, allstudents showed significant improvement in motorabilities. Both groups with no experience were able toreach similar precision and accuracy results as those withexperience.