With a growing call for an increased emphasis on computing in school curricula, there is a need to make computing accessible to a diversity of learners. One potential approach is to extend the use of physical toolkits, which have been found to encourage collaboration, sustained engagement and effective learning in classrooms in general. However, little is known as to whether and how these benefits can be leveraged in special needs schools, where learners have a spectrum of distinct cognitive and social needs. Here, we investigate how introducing a physical toolkit can support learning about computing concepts for special education needs (SEN) students in their classroom. By tracing how the students' interactions-both with the physical toolkit and with each other-unfolded over time, we demonstrate how the design of both the form factor and the learning tasks embedded in a physical toolkit contribute to collaboration, comprehension and engagement when learning in mixed SEN classrooms.

Autism affects how people perceive and make sense of the world around them. Autism is a spectrum condition which impacts people in different ways. Also referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), it is characterized by challenges in the domains of social, cognitive and motor functioning, which differ in severity. Previous research suggests that music can have cognitive, psychosocial, behavioural, and motor benefits in this population. We systematically review the use of technology in Music-therapy and related sound-based activities to improve the motor and social skills of children. In May 2020 we conducted a systematic search on Music-therapy and musical activities for autistic children in research databases including Science Direct, APA PsycNet, Cochrane, IEE and Web of Science, to collect relevant studies. We initially collected 5,179 papers of which only 27 studies were identified as suitable for the scope of this review. In the paper, we analyse and describe key characteristics of each project. We then highlight the commonalities, strengths and limitations of existing work, and identify implications for future interaction design.

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Interactional synchrony, the spontaneous coordination of movements during interaction, is increasingly considered important in research on the development of non-verbal communication by autistic children. There is evidence that interventions using embodiedinteraction technologies to support interactional synchrony are possible, but we do not have a shared framework in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) for designing and evaluating such systems. We discuss existing measurement and evaluation tools used in experimental psychology and consider how the prevalent approach could be adapted to naturalistic HCI study contexts, with input from domain experts. We report on an exploratory case study evaluating a full-body interactive musical system with a group of ten autistic children. We provide methodological recommendations for the evaluation of future systems focusing on interactional synchrony, highlight limitations of current measurement tools and suggest mitigations. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); HCI design and evaluation methods.

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