Developing bodily movement games to teach basic life skills for children with mental disabilities

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Bilgisayar ve Öğretim Teknolojileri Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: MOHAMMAD JAVAD NAZIRZADEH

Danışman: KÜRŞAT ÇAĞILTAY

Özet:

Students with mental disabilities often have trouble generalizing concepts and skills from one setting to another. An alternative way to teach generalization is to teach students solve problems pertinent to their daily lives and to reinforce behaviors that would occur in the natural environment. In this thesis, we propose a system to augment the environment for mentally disabled students in order to easily cope with life skills by game and fun. The games were developed for motion sensing input devices by following spiral iterative methodology. In the start, game concepts were approved by a special education subject matter expert and then prototypes were developed and tested. In the next step, feedback used to improve prototypes. This process continued until a satisfactory bodily movement game for special education children is developed. In addition to this, we also tested and improved usability approach for bodily movement games for special education children. The results show positive effects of the developed game in special education.