Supporting Collaboration between Visually Impaired andSighted Children in a Multimodal Learning Environment

摘要

Visually impaired pupils are a group that teachers need to pay attention to especially when planning group work. The need for supporting collaboration between visually impaired and sighted people has been pointed out but still there are few evaluations on that. In this paper two studies are described concerning collaboration support for visually impaired and sighted children in a multimodal learning environment. Based on the results of the first study where two children used a multimodal single-user Space application together, the application was improved to better support collaboration. This prototype was then evaluated. According to the results it is worthwhile to provide individual input devices for all the participants in the group. For helping the pupils to achieve a common ground it is also important to provide sufficient support for all senses in a multimodal environment and to take care of the feedback about the haptic status of the environment also for the sighted participants.