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Inclusive Digital Learning

This is a research environment with the purpose of investigating how the digitalisation of the school affects learning and inclusion in group work for students with ADHD and students with visual impairment. The aim is to explore the conditions that currently prevail for these students in terms of the effects that digitalisation in school have, but also whether multisensory interfaces together with an inclusive pedagogical approach can ensure that more of these students can reach the knowledge goals according to the school curriculum. Interviews with teachers and students and observations in schools are performed with a focus on how group work is experienced today regarding inclusion, ability to achieve the stipulated learning criteria and ability to concentrate. In intervention studies we investigate if multisensory learning environments improve students ability to fulfil the same learning criteria in a better way. In parallel, the knowledge acquired in the project is applied into a learning context through close collaboration with teacher education programs.

Illustration of group work

Our earlier research has shown that group work is an important part of the mandatory school years in Sweden. It does not only enable collaborative problem solving and learning, but also helps in forming social bands and skills during the early years of life. Interviews and observations have shown that taking part in group work activities can be especially challenging for visually impaired pupils, since they are usually the only visually impaired pupils in their respective class and can often not use the same material as the sighted pupils do. This creates problems with establishing common ground and has been shown to lead to exclusion of visually impaired pupils from parts of the work. Technical solutions for supporting collaboration between sighted and visually impaired pupils during group work in school has been developed and evaluated in this project that provide both visual, auditory and haptic feedback in a shared interface. Results show an improved inclusion of all group members due to an improved shared focus on the information in the multisensory work space. This work will be further verified for the target group pupils with visual impairement and further extended to investigate the possible benefits of multisensory group work interfaces for pupils with ADHD.

 Video 1. 3D Haptic collaborative virtual environment.

Video 2. 3D haptic, auditory and visual interface for group work on coordinate systems.

Video 3. 3D haptic, auditory and visual interface for group work on geography.

Team

Current members

  • Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander, Professor at Royal Institute of Technology

  • Kjetil Falkenberg, Associate Professor at Royal Institute of Technology

  • Henric Andersson, PhD student at Royal Institute of Technology

  • Jonas Moll, Assistant Professor at Örebro University

  • Annika Andersson, Professor at Örebro University

  • Pernilla Josefsson, Senior Lecturer at Södertörns Högskola

  • Charlotte Magnusson, Senior Lecturer at Lund University

  • Stefan Johansson, Affilited Faculty at KTH and LU and CEO of Begripsam AB

Former project partners

  • Axess Lab AB
  • The Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired, SRF
  • The National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools, SPSM

Funding


2024 - 2029 Inclusive Digital Learning research environment funded by the Swedish Research Council, VR S

2019 - 2021 CoHapSon, project funded by Vinnova

2013 - 2016 MUMI, project funded by the Swedish Research Council, VR NT

2006 - 2011 MCE, project funded by the Swedish Research Council, VR NT

2004 - 2007 MICOLE, project funded by EU IST 6th framework program