Practical Education of Adults With Intellectual Disabilities Using a Web Course

Abstract

Education of adults with intellectual disabilities in labor activities can help them to successfully and repeatedly carry out their work tasks and significantly help their self-realization. The problem is that the need for frequent repetition of already learned skills requires the constant presence of a teacher or caregiver since such a worker is not able to work independently. This situation increases the cost of employing people with disabilities. The aim is to find a way to reduce the necessary number of caregivers needed in this kind of activity and enable greater self-sufficiency of workers. The presented research intended to verify whether a web course could be an effective educational tool for people with intellectual disabilities. During the research, a group of ten participants with intellectual disabilities was educated to acquire basic skills in horticulture. The first teaching was realized through practical demonstrations at the workplace in the university production garden by professional gardeners. After these demonstrations skills of all participants were verified and so the basic level for further verification and comparison of knowledge was set. Subsequently, using three approaches of repeating the already learned practical curriculum (verbal repetition, no repetition, and repetition using the web course) and different time intervals, the level of knowledge of each participant was verified. Statistical methods were used to compare the results of different repetition approaches. Research results demonstrated that a web course, with specific content that consists of video or animation, combined with the use of pictograms for confident navigation, can be used by people with intellectual disabilities with good results. At the same time, in addition to practical teaching, this was the second best-rated approach of repeating knowledge. Using a web course, participants achieved similar work results as they did in practical teaching. Keywords: adult education, intellectual disabilities, professional education, web course.

Serious Games for Executive Functions Training for Adults with Intellectual Disability: Overview

“…Regarding gender, four articles indicated the gender of the participants and only two studies included a balanced sample of men and women [ 47 , 52 ], while the remaining four articles did not identify the gender of the participants in the study.…”

Impact of Assistive Technologies to Inclusive Education and Independent Life of Down Syndrome Persons: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda

“…Intellectual and developmental disabilities are the major symptoms that are explored in the following works: [25,30,62,65,70,[75][76][77][78][79]. They address different problems related to DS adults and students such as: performing work tasks [27,30,74]; obtaining independent life skills [25,75,77]; improving long-term memory [76] and sensory stimulation [65]; experience of performing several of these, and finally; evaluation of vocational training [62].…”

“…VSDs enhanced by ACC were introduced as an intervention to help students with DS complete steps of specific everyday activities, such as packing backpacks with food [74]. Another valuable contribution to gaining functional skills is the Web-based course that helps IDD persons repeat some working activities in horticulture that they previously acquired during practical teaching [70]. They include planting seeds in pots, planting seedlings in pots, watering using a watering can, and weeding the flowerpot.…”

“…Apart from the obvious benefits, most of the studies that were practically implemented revealed a variety of barriers to integrating the emerging technology or the inability to incorporate them into inclusive education. These include the need for constant supervision [70], thus disabling full independence; the need for customization for DS persons [25]; comprehension problems triggered by the significant difference with traditional technologies [30]; an unclear interface [67] that causes confusion and drop outs [65,75]; reliability problems of used assistive technology [61] that significantly disables its inclusiveness [25], and also imprecise assessment of the approach due to very few participants that were included in the experiments [75,79].…”