Virtual environments for social skills training

Virtual environments for social skills training: comments from two adolescents with autistic spectrum disorder (click here for PDF file)
Computers & Education, Volume 47, Issue 2, September 2006, Pages 186-206
Sarah Parsons, Anne Leonard, Peter Mitchell




"Two autistic kids...navigating a virtual bus and café."

Summary:
The purpose of this study by Parsons, Leonard and Mitchell was to explore the effectiveness of a virtual environment (VE) in providing social skills training for people living with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Using a qualitative case-study approach, the researchers looked at the responses and behaviour of two British boys diagnosed with ASD. The presence of a facilitator helped the participants activate their avatars in socially acceptable ways by providing feedback and opportunities for discussion.

My response:
I was intrigued by this study because my thesis idea also involves handicapped students learning in a virtual environment (Second Life). In this study, the researchers acknowledge that VEs are being used with ASD clients in social skill development. Because my own "hypothetical" study was to involve a small number of participants and a case-study model, I thought this paper by Parsons, Leonard and Mitchell might give me some insights into the process.

The two adolescents were led through a virtual café visit (with 4 levels of busy-ness) and a virtual bus trip (with 5 levels of crowdedness.) The students had to make choices about where to sit, what questions to ask and how to behave in a socially acceptable manner. While there was some evidence of repetitive behaviour and "game play" mentality, the boys did make some progress.

The focus here really was on the facilitator-participant interaction. The researchers hoped to show that value of this approach was not to abandon the students in front of a computer program, but to guide them, with multiple opportunities to "retry" until they could be successful. Would they treat the experience as artificial with no connection to the real world, or would this be a true learning opportunity whose lessons could be applied to real life situations? (What I found interesting was that in the follow-up interview with "John", he indicated that he was able to put some of the principles he learned into practice, while the other participant ("Mike") showed no such initiative.)

Draft of First Chapter

Bringing Teen Second Life to High School: Creating a more satisfying educational experience for students living with a profound physical disability.

The way in which school accommodates students with profound physical disabilities has changed over the years. It is currently considered good educational practice to ensure that students living with a physical disability are mainstreamed into classrooms with typical students. In British Columbia, the Ministry of Education has clearly mandated mainstreaming, or integration as it is more commonly called:

With integration, students with special needs are included in educational settings with their peers who do not have special needs, and provided with the necessary accommodations determined on an individual basis, to enable them to be successful there. (2006)

This practice has as its goal the inclusion of disabled students, normalizing their handicaps and including them in a wider circle of their peers (Flagle 2007). While this is a desirable outcome, in some cases the nature and severity of the disability creates very real obstacles for the student being integrated, their peers in the classroom and the instructor. (Stukat 1993) For example, the presence of a motorized wheelchair creates mobility and space issues: the student cannot participate in group activities to the same extent, or inter-act in the same way as other students. The presence of additional personnel, such as a personal care attendant or nurse and an educational assistant further distance the student from his/her peers. Communication may be impeded by equipment such as a respirator or electronic Pathfinder™. Additionally, a disabled student may be required to arrive after the bell to avoid crowded hallways and as a result s/he is always the cause of an interruption to the start of a well-ordered classroom. Teachers may react negatively. (Caffee 1997) In some cases, the student may feel that being in the class is more isolating and problematic than simply taking the course by correspondence. A further consideration is that, while a typical student is able to make friends with other typical students, and use class time as an opportunity to deepen these connections, the nature of a disabled student’s handicap as well as the support infrastructure needed to function (i.e. nurse, educational assistant, breathing apparatus, etc) reduces or eliminates the opportunities for this peer-to-peer relationship building. Can a virtual learning space provide a better option for these students?

There have been tremendous advances in the creation of virtual social networking environments in the past six years. The “Virtual environments” website lists networks such as Active Worlds, Gaia Online, Habbo Hotel, Kaneva, The Sims Online, Whyville, OSGrid and Greenbush among others. There have also been a number of business environments created to bring people together for work-related activities. (ie Forterra Systems, 3DXplorer, and Qwak)

The best-known example of this kind of virtual environment is Second Life. Launched on June 23, 2003, Second Life (known as SL or 2L by participants) is a virtual environment created by Linden Lab that allows users, (also called “residents”), to interact with each other through virtual identities known as avatars. The Wikipedia entry for SL explains that “residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid.” This platform is becoming so popular as a tool for delivering post-secondary content that there are at least 300 universities around the world teaching courses or conducting research in SL. (Michels 2008)

There are many examples in Second Life of people living with disabilities thriving and engaging in active social lives.

Wild Cunningham is the name of an avatar who is actually controlled by, generally nine people who live in a care center in Massachusetts, who –they're all pro-foundly handicapped; there's generally very little physical movement – they're in wheelchairs, a lot of paralysis, actually, and what they do is they interact in Second Life as an avatar named Wild Cunningham, and they go places and they say things based on democratic vote. (Ree 2008)

Niels Schuddeboom (aka Niles Sopor), a paraplegic from Holland is able to walk, run and fly and create films on the grid. David Wallace, a quadriplegic from Australia exhibits his virtual artistic creations “in-world”. Simon Stevens (aka Simon Walsh in SL) from Britain operates a nightclub called Wheelies. (Cassidy 2007) These are just a few examples of disabled adults who have found new and exciting opportunities in Second Life. In an article written for Innovate, an online journal, McKinney et al talk about the tremendous potential for university students and the Second Life environment (2008) McKinney and her co-writers believe that there are many reasons why this kind of virtual space is beneficial for learning disabled university learners. If this social networking site can help adults with handicaps, and university students living with a learning disability, what can it do for teens living with a physical handicap and their education?

This study was created to investigate the satisfaction level of physically disabled students with the learning environment that purports to meet their education needs (the regular classroom) and see whether the advances in virtual social networks such as Second Life could provide a more satisfactory learning space given their disability. While there are many post-secondary instances of using SL in education, this study looks at the experiences of a select number of high school students to see if Second Life provided a better educational experience.

Using a case study approach, ten Grade 11 high school students, five male and five female, were selected from a large metropolitan school-district. Each student had severe physical handicaps (i.e. spinal cord injuries). These participants were surveyed using a thirty question 5-point Likert-type response format to see how satisfied they were with their current face-to-face experience in a typical classroom. Questions focused on such areas as: content acquisition, teacher-student interaction, student-student interaction, comfort level in the classroom and social “connectedness”.

Because students under the age of 18 are not allowed on the regular Second Life grid, the study researcher asked the students to create IDs on the Teen grid of Second Life and arranged for the acquisition of a separate educational space for the study. The teen policy on the Linden Lab wiki explains this requirement:

The only adults allowed on the mainland in Teen Second Life are Linden employees. If you are an educator and want to work with teens in Teen Second Life, there is the opportunity to buy a private island on the Teen Grid and participate, but you will not be able to leave that island and visit the Teen Grid mainland. Teens from the mainland will be able to visit your private island if/when you choose, but they will be automatically informed that there are adults present. Also, if you are planning to use a private island on the Teen Grid to interact with teens from the main-land, we will need to run a background check on you for security and safety reasons. (Kemp 2006)

The disabled students, along with 15 able-bodied Grade 11 students chosen at random from the district, were then enrolled in a mini-course in Teen Second Life (a 6 week long program) that covered an aspect of their existing Grade 11 Socials curriculum. In order to see how this environment affected non-school-related relationships, over the course of the six weeks, non-structured “breaks” and other socializing opportunities were arranged by the instructor. All students were then surveyed at the end of the course to see how “satisfied” they were with the experience. Additionally, in order to collect anecdotal evidence, all students were interviewed one-on-one to see how they compared the SL classroom with a typical learning environment. Students were not told who was disabled or not, and the stated purpose of the mini-course was to ask the students to help the researcher “explore on-line learning”.

The questions that this study seeks to answer are:

1) Do physically disabled students find that Second Life is more “satisfying” than their regular classroom experience?

2) Does Second Life succeed in fostering more non-school-related relationships among the able-bodied and disabled students?

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References

Allsop, J. (1980). Mainstreaming Physically Handicapped Students. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 13(4), 37-44.

Caffee, Holly. (1997) "Mainstreaming: Facts and Opinions on the Debate." University of Delaware. Retrieved February 2, 2009, from http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/final.paper.pub/_pwfsfp/00000112.htm

Cassidy, M. (2007, May 15). Flying with disability in Second Life - Eureka Street. Retrieved February 21, 2009, from http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=2787

Center, Yola & Ward, James (1987). Teachers’ Attitudes Towards the Integration of Disabled Children into Regular Schools. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 34 (1), 41-56.

Flagle, R. (2007). Raven's Guide to Special Education: Mainstreaming. Retrieved February 10, 2009, from http://www.seformmatrix.com/raven/raven8.htm

How Education Enterprises Use Virtual Worlds | Second Life Grid. (n.d.). Retrieved February 2, 2009, from http://secondlifegrid.net/slfe/education-use-virtual-world

Kemp, J. (2006, April 12). Second Life Education Wiki. Retrieved February 12, 2009, from www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

Michels, Patrick (2008, February 16). "Universities Use Second Life to Teach Complex Concepts". Government Technology. Retrieved February 5, 2009, from http://www.govtech.com/gt/252550.

McKinney, S., A. Horspool, R. Willers, O. Safie, and L. Richlin. (2008) Using Second Life with learning-disabled students in higher education. Innovate, 5 (2). Retrieved February 12, 2009, from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=573

Ministry of Education. (2006, August 23). Policy Site: Special Education - B.C. Ministry of Education - Province of B.C.. Retrieved February 5, 2009, from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/policy/policies/special_ed.htm

Ministry of Education. (2008). Special Education Services: A Manual of Policies, Procedures and Guidelines. Victoria BC: BC Ministry of Education .

Ree, P. (2008, December 30). Entry Point For Half-Lane Cheerleader Zone : Why so few Cyberman TF tales around?. Retrieved February 15, 2009, from http://porsupah.livejournal.com/191292.html

Second Life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved February 13, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

Stukat, K. (1993). Integration of physically disabled students . European Journal of Spe-cial Needs Education, 8(3), 249-268.

Virtual Environments, Virtual Worlds, Social MMOGs, MUVEs, CVEs, MMOs. (n.d.). Retrieved February 15, 2009, from http://www.virtualenvironments.info/

White, R. (n.d.). Greenbush Labs Blog » opensim. Retrieved February 10, 2009, from http://roots.greenbush.us/?cat=12

Quantitative Analysis

*Quantitative Analysis - GPowell

Virtual Embodied Learning Environments and Student Satisfaction

Level of satisfaction with Virtual Embodied Learning Environments (VELEs) for students living with a physical disability.

Design
This case study looks at the satisfaction levels reported by small group of high school students with physical disabilities enrolled in a Virtual Embodied Learning Environment (VELE) (i.e. "Second Life"-like learning space.)

Type
Qualitative - Case Study

Problem
Students with physical disabilities often report feelings of isolation and disengagement in face-to-face classrooms with typical students. (Sutherland 2001) In severe cases, respirators and other hardware, personal care and educational assistants as well as other conditions create obstacles for these students to feel accepted and part of the group of learners. While simple on-line VLEs (ie Blackboard) can help these students learn (Gerrard 2007), typical VLEs may not provide enough of a realistic and satisfactory classroom environment. There is indication that VELEs can assist post-secondary students (McKinney 2008) but this needs to be explored at the high school level.

Purpose
This case study aims to build on the findings of an Italian study (De Lucia 2008) that observed able bodied university student reactions to learning in a VELE. It seeks to determine if embodied virtual learning spaces generate more student satisfaction for high school students with physical disabilities with the learning environment than face-to-face classrooms.

Questions


Hypothesis
We predict that high school students with physical disabilities will find that a VELE will provide them with a greater sense of satisfaction with their classroom experience than face-to-face instruction.

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References:

De Lucia, A., Francese, R., Passero, I., & Tortora, G. (2009). Development and evaluation of a
virtual campus on Second Life: The case of SecondDMI. Computers & Education, 52(2),
220–233.

Gerrard, C. (2007). Virtual learning environments: Enhancing the learning experience for students with disabilities. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 24(3), 199-206.

Sutherland, M. (2001). Why are students with disabilities failing? Is mainstreaming the cause?. Issues In Educational Research, 11(1), 41-61.

McKinney, S., A. Horspool, R. Willers, O. Safie, and L. Richlin. 2008. Using Second Life with learning-disabled students in higher education. Innovate 5 (2).
http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=573 (accessed January 25, 2009