ICT Based Learning Solutions for Children with ASD: A Requirement Engineering Study

Abstract

This research explores the explicit requirements to design and develop ICT based learning solutions for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). A requirement elicitation study has been conducted for six weeks in a specialized school in Pune, India. The sample size of the study is fifteen (N=15), with an age limit between five to twelve years old. All the participants have been diagnosed with ASD and undergoing skills development process in the same institution for at least six months. The outcomes of this research are tri-fold. Firstly, identify the twelve explicit requirements to design and develop ICT based learning solutions considering the challenges due to autism. Secondly, conformity to existing Multi Agent based Persuasive Education (MAPE) model with revealed requirements. Thirdly, propose an Internet of Things (IoT) based framework to observe and record the learning performance of ASD affected children to develop a dataset for extensive future research to improve their way of living. Through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), this framework will eventually be used to identify the learning patterns and new requirements through heuristics. Systematic approach to reveal the requirements and proposed novel IoT based framework are the significant contributions of this study.