Excellence Gateway
Published: 21 December 2009
This case study was produced by JISC Regional Support Centre for South West on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance: Specialist schools/colleges
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving responsiveness to learners, improving institutional effectiveness, webcams, avatars, additional learning support, learners with severe learning disabilities, communication, assistive technology, screen magnifiers
Oakwood Court College has helped to enhance the education and lives of its students through the use of innovative practices and technology. The College has successfully used webcams with avatars to breakdown the communication barriers between tutors and students with autism.
Oakwood Court College is a specialist residential educational College, which provides care and support for its students, who have a range of learning needs.
The College provides support for its 35 students, all with different types of disabilities and needs, these include Asperger's Syndrome, autism, Down's syndrome, Williams Syndrome and other types of learning difficulties.
At Oakwood Court College every student matters and their future independence and success is at the forefront of all that the College does. It is a friendly place to live, work and learn offering a variety of academic and vocationally focused programmes. Students have a wide range of interests, backgrounds, abilities and ambitions.
The College is committed to providing each student with the skills they need to become self-reliant in leading purposeful and fulfilling lives. This means ensuring that people with learning difficulties have the opportunity to gain knowledge and experiences that, in many cases, leads to employment at the conclusion of their college programme.
The College has campus-wide wireless networking and remote access to both the management information system (MIS) and email, and laptops and digital cameras for staff use. There is an interactive whiteboard in most classrooms and the College provides webcams, screen magnifiers, digital photoframe keyrings alongside accessible computer software like Vubar, Dspeech, MindMap, Art Rage, Picassa, Photo Elements to aid the students.
Oakwood Court College wanted to improve the communication and interaction of its students through the use of technology.
The biggest challenge for Oakwood was to try and find a way of enabling some of its students with very specific learning needs to talk and communicate with staff and their families. There are two students this case study focuses on: one is Brynmor, who has autism and found it difficult to speak without using a keyboard and verbal prompting from staff, and the second is another past student named Celeste, who is diagnosed with selective mutism and chose not to speak. The primary aim was to investigate whether technology could help to improve the way students communicate and interact with staff, parents and friends.
Another important factor was to build an inclusive learning environment that was suitable for all students.
ILT Co-ordinator, K.C. Kelly-Marwick, was faced with the challenge of providing accessible and inclusive learning for all her students, who all have different learning needs. She evaluated each student and trialled the use of webcams within her sessions with the students.
Image 1: Example screenshots of webcam avatars and activities
She found that the students related to the webcams very well but that some students, like Brynmor, still had difficulty using them and were not keen to see themselves on the screen.
As a result, K.C tried using video avatars (which can be selected once the webcam has been enabled). This then provides the student with a series of avatars that they can choose. Once selected, the avatar will be projected onto their own face on-screen. This creates fun characters such as an alien or the moon, for example, to be transposed onto their own face.
Image 2: Brynmor using a webcam avatar object
K.C. has also introduced lunch-time and evening internet and computer sessions, which are free sessions designed to enhance numeracy and communication skills. The aim of these sessions is to encourage students to send emails to family members and use the webcams and Skype. They only have 15 minutes during the lunch period to do this, so they must keep track of their time. This means that they have to use numeracy skills to check the time they arrived and how much time they have left.
The evening sessions are designed to be fun sessions, so that the students can utilise all the technology in the same way as students from a comprehensive school would be able to at home. This means that the student can have access to the internet, using websites like Face book and YouTube.
The most incredible outcome of the use of the webcams and avatars was that Oakwood Court College student Celeste, in spite of her mutism, was able to speak for the very first time by using this technology.
Image 3: The sunshine avatar that helped Celeste to speak at College for the first time
The video below (under the 'Supporting files' heading) of her talking using the avatar of a sunshine demonstrates that, by providing a calm and friendly environment for her, she was able to start communicating and interacting at the College, which was a major breakthrough.
“Seeing Celeste speak was both a shock and a very humbling experience; to see a mute student able to speak through using the Web Cam avatars was a very special moment. “Now Celeste is able to communicate with her family through the internet by using the Web Cams with the avatars, so her parents can check her progress directly.” K.C. Kelly-Marwick, ILT Co-ordinator
“Seeing Celeste speak was both a shock and a very humbling experience; to see a mute student able to speak through using the Web Cam avatars was a very special moment.
“Now Celeste is able to communicate with her family through the internet by using the Web Cams with the avatars, so her parents can check her progress directly.”
K.C. Kelly-Marwick, ILT Co-ordinator
Brynmor has difficulty communicating and responding to instructions due to the effects of autism. He has been able to use the webcam avatars to communicate with staff and his family. His progress has been excellent and he is able to use the avatars to interact much better than before.
The students also have access to a whole range of software and equipment to aid their learning, these include:
Students are better able to communicate with staff and each other.
The educational environment is very rich, complementing technology with excellent working practices to find new ways for their students to learn.
The benefits for a student like Brynmor are potentially life-changing because he will be able to take the technology that he has learned at the College with him in the future. With support he will be able to use the webcams to communicate with his family. From a carers point of view, they will also be able to use the technology to help Brynmor and communicate better with him.
For Celeste, this type of technology will undoubtedly help her to overcome her inability to speak outside the comfort of her home. This has the potential for her to be able to communicate outside the places of comfort in the real world.
“We would love to see all specialist colleges adopting the same technology, we feel that this has not only had a real educational benefit, but will be of great value to their lives after college.” K.C. Kelly-Marwick, ILT Co-ordinator
“We would love to see all specialist colleges adopting the same technology, we feel that this has not only had a real educational benefit, but will be of great value to their lives after college.”
There are different varieties of Logitech webcams available, but the price is very reasonable and some come with the avatar software included in the package.
The ultimate aim is to enrich the students' life and education by providing them with the tools to be expressive, so they can learn within an environment that is interactive. Enabling them to explore the world around them is a crucial element to engaging with the students. Staff can communicate better with students through using webcams and the students can also communicate with family, friends and each other through Skype.
All these tools are relatively inexpensive, but have greatly enhanced the education for the students. Further research is planned to capture the effects of this innovation and further understand how this can be developed to aid student learning.
Watch a video of Celeste speaking for the first time at college using the sunshine avatar.
Press the play button twice to watch the video.
Alternatively, download the video.
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