Educational reading for youths with special needs

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Educational reading for youths with special needs

Robin Rubindal

Computer Science and Engineering, master's level 2020

Luleå University of Technology

Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering

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Abstract

Children with intellectual disabilities often struggle with reading, and traditional ways of learning can be frustrating and difficult. This thesis investigates the ability to adapt gaming as a more creative and engaging way for these children to practice sentence structure and reading comprehension. The result is a prototype that makes use of reading scenes mixed with interactive scenes where the user gets to build sentences through different game mechanics such as drag & drop, marking of words and point &

click. Depending on what sentence is built, the story changes. The overall evaluation feedback of this prototype is positive and that it has potential but would require further work since reading is a complex activity and the reading levels of children with special needs are very individual.

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1 Introduction

Being born with an intellectual disability often also means to struggle with reading and the traditional ways of learning can be too difficult. Children with such learning disabilities require a more creative way to stay motivated to improve their reading comprehension.

Technology has quickly become part of everyday life, even the youngest children can be seen playing with technical devices, specifically games on these devices.

This thesis investigates the possibility of combining gaming and learning, specifically how they can be used to practice reading comprehension.

1.1 Background

While using technology and gaming as tools for digital learning is not an unexplored field and there are successful companies that offer digital learning solutions, for example Edmentum (https://www.edmentum.com/). The field is by no means complete, creative tools such as technology and gaming offer near limitless possibilities due to their flexibility and adaptability which means that there are still a vast depth of unexplored solutions in the field of digital learning.

The field of digital-game based learning is of course not without studies, with subjects ranging from preschool to university. A study by Eklund, Lyytinen, Ronimus & Pesu (2019) investigated the use of games as a learning tool for children with learning disabilities, mainly in regards to reading abilities. they state that one key part of digital games is that from a learning perspective they are usually good for keeping the users engagement. The study discuss many previous game-based learning studies and there is no definitive answer if it is indeed a better learning practice than traditional learning. The conclusion that can be made however is that it provides another perspective and will appeal to certain individuals more than others.

It’s important that new solutions are sought, especially when it comes to children with learning disabilities because they differ immensely when it comes to how they learn and what keeps them motivated. The national center for education statistics (NCES, 2020) present statistics every year of how many students with disabilities are enrolled in public school in the US. According to NCES (2020) 14% of public school students of age 3-21 had a disability the school year 2018- 19 and received special education services. That’s 7.1 million students that received special education in the US during that school year.

Taking the two points under consideration, that children with learning disabilities differ immensely with how they learn and stay motivated as well as the fact that a big percentage require special education. While successful digital learning solutions like reading eggs (https://readingeggs.co.uk/) used by Edmentum

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cover a portion of students with special needs, no solution will be perfect for everyone. New solutions must continuously be developed for all children to have the biggest chance to live as normal a life as possible. This thesis hopes to com- bine mechanics of existing solutions with new ideas and create new ways to help those that suffer from a learning disability.

1.2 Motivation

The motivation behind this thesis is to help children with intellectual disabilities live as much of a normal life as possible, in this case by adapting traditional ways of learning how to read by integrating them into more creative environments, in this case the environment is gaming. In a more creative environment it’s easier to stay motivated when faced with challenges and difficulties that comes with learning.

1.3 Problem definition

With intellectual disabilities comes a new challenge of how to adapt traditional ways of education to better suit a person with special needs. Someone with special needs that learns how to read require more time to practice and more support to not get frustrated with the added difficulty to their overall reading comprehension.

More creative tools then reading a book under what could be considered normal circumstances is required to efficiently keep a person with special needs motivated to develop their reading comprehension. One creative tool with near limitless capabilities is through technology like computers and gaming. With a tool like gaming you can provide visual support, illustrative feedback and more. The possibilities are bound by the creators imagination and expertise to implement their vision.

One problem that needs to be investigated is, what game concepts are appropriate and useful for training reading comprehension? This question can be broken down to more specific questions:

• What game concepts can be used to keep the user motivated and engaged to practice their reading comprehension?

• What game mechanics are appropriate to practice reading comprehension?

Another issue that is important to consider, since anyone with reading difficulties have an individual reading level, the solution needs to be easy to adapt to different reading levels.

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• How can these game concepts be implemented in a flexible way so that they are reusable on multiple stages of a game without requiring extensive programming skills?

1.4 Equality and ethics

Since the prototype will not have any type of online activity or account of any type, see chapter 1.6 for delimitations, there is no reason to gather any sensitive information about any individual in this thesis. Since the prototype will not handle any sensitive data, a big part of ethical issues are avoided from the start.

The purpose of this prototype is to assist in the well-being of children with intellectual disabilities by helping them continue to develop their reading comprehension. The thesis is to be a contribution to society in the hopes of helping these children live as close to normal lives as possible. To ensure that the final prototype won’t make the end user feel offended or their intellect diminished, the design of the prototype idea is to be iterated with professors that are experienced in the area as well as the input from professional special education pedagogues will influence the prototype.

1.5 Sustainability

Since the purpose of this thesis is to achieve a better learning environment for children with intellectual disability to improve their reading comprehension it can be seen as to fall under one of the UN sustainability goals (United Nations [UN], n.d.). Goal number four, listed as quality education where as of year 2030 the goal is to ensure that all children have access to proficient education.

The traditional way of learning how to read is in many cases to much of a challenge for a child with special needs, if the goal is to be fulfilled it requires an adaptation of teaching how to read to ensure that all children, no matter what needs, have the tools to improve and develop their reading comprehension.

1.6 Delimitation

The possibilities with a creative tool such as gaming is near limitless, to ensure that the thesis is done in time some limitations have been made.

Online: While it would be an interesting idea for users to experience their chosen adventures together and assist each other through learning, any type of co-op or online play will be excluded from this prototype.

Mobile: This prototype is developed using unity and therefore it would be possible to make it available for mobile platforms but that comes with its own

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challenges. So this prototype will only be designed to run on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Graphics: A game with advanced graphics can in many cases feel more immersed and appealing, but the target audience is not necessarily running high end machines so advanced graphics will be excluded.

Sounds: Environmental sounds create a more immersive experience and vocal sounds can be important when practicing reading comprehension, however due to time limitations sounds was decided to be excluded from the prototype.

Character animations: Having responsive characters and animals in the environment is another tool that help create an engaging and immersive game.

But if animations are not done correctly they may look awkward and decrease the quality of the game, so in the interest of time character animations was excluded.

1.7 Thesis structure

Chapter 2: This chapter contains research about game concepts and mechanics used in both digital- and non-digital solutions to practice reading comprehension.

Chapter 3: Why and how the thesis is done and additional information that has been a big part of understanding and designing a prototype idea.

Chapter 4: Results of the implementation of the prototype idea is presented here.

Chapter 5: Evaluation of the results presented in the previous chapter.

Chapter 6: Discussions about the evaluation feedback and some design choices that was made.

Chapter 7: The overall outcome of the work, ideas for improvements and general thoughts.

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2 Related work

To find a solution to the problems defined in chapter 1.3, previous solutions both within digital learning and none-digital learning needs to be investigated to find mechanics that differ or are similar but use a different perspective. Are there none-digital solutions that are appropriate to be digital solutions but haven’t been integrated into a digital learning environment yet, or can they be adapted into a new idea?

2.1 Digital solutions

The purpose of investigating previous digital solutions is to find successful mechanics and ideas to see if the generalized mechanic can be combined or adapted into the prototype that is developed in this thesis.

2.1.1 Project deuterium

Project deuterium¹is a finished student project at Lulea university of technology meant to help children with intellectual disabilities to practice their reading comprehension. This was inspired by a non-digital solution ”choose your own adventure” book and adapted together with computer technology and gaming.

The user gets to experience a story that can branch on several points along the way by the user interacting with scenes and making choices through placing objects within the scene from the UI, see figure 1.

1Lulea University of Technology. (2020). Project Deuterium. Internal distribution.

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Figure 1: This is a branching point where the user gets to choose whether to unlock the prisoner and acquire his help or push forward alone.

The user practice their reading comprehension by following the story in the form of text scenes and choose their own adventure by dragging the objects on the right side of the screen into their own world. In the scene above the user could choose to unlock the cage using the key on the right side of the UI.

The key parts of this solution that will be adapted into the prototype in this thesis is that the user will follow a story through reading scenes and one of the interactions throughout the story will be in form of drag and drop.

2.1.2 Reading eggs

Reading eggs is a comprehensive programme that teaches young children of ages 2-13 how to read using technology like phones, tablets and computers (https://readingeggs.co.uk/). Here children gets to practice their reading through a wide variety of online books that contain words they just studied through the lessons of the programme, the lessons use animated characters, songs and fun situations to keep the children interested in learning.

There are sample lessons of different activities the children will participate in, these lessons help find the definition and context of sentences through pictures, word games like choosing a certain word to study, then displaying the definition of the word in fun and interactive way, or finding a correlation between words, see figure 2.

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Figure 2: This is a reading eggs sample lesson where the user find correlations between words.

In the example above is another perspective of the drag and drop mechanic compared to project deuterium in chapter 2.1.1. Here you don’t drag objects from a UI onto the scene but rather move objects that are spawned in the scene to their expected locations. If a word is dragged to a incorrect location the object resets and an alerting sound is played.

The programme states that children with reading learning difficulties, autistic spectrum and other struggling readers have had success using their programme because its content can be repeated at anytime. Repetition is one of the keys to success for struggling readers and because the programme is fun and interactive through its games and activities, children will enjoy repeating them. (Reading eggs, n.d.).

Since we now know repetition is important and so is correlations between words, we can adapt the concepts of repetition and correlation into the prototype covered in this thesis. For example, reading scenes can hold key information to build sentences in an interactive scene and the scenes should easily be repeatable.

2.1.3 Rainbow sentences

Rainbow sentences is one of a handful of educational apps provided by Mobile education store (http://mobile-educationstore.com/). The app help children practice reading comprehension by letting them build sentences that match the context of a visual experience, see figure 3.

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Figure 3: This is a sample from rainbow sentences.

In this app the words are color coded, the different colors are cues to answer the parts: who, what, where and why of a sentence. It’s stated that research have indicated that color coding can assist with language comprehension and studies show that children with learning disabilities benefit from multi-sensory instructional strategies (Thomson, 2012).

The part of this solution that is to be adapted into the prototype is color coding, since the prototype will serve as a flexible tool the color coding might not be as extensive as the examples of Rainbow sentences, but function like an optional hint system that may help the user build correct sentences.

2.2 Non-digital solutions

The purpose of investigating previous non-digital solutions is to find successful mechanics and ideas that not only have previously been adapted into digital solutions but perhaps concepts that has yet been implemented in a digital learning environment.

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2.2.1 Choose your own adventure

The ”choose your own adventure” books has been around for over 40 years and has been cited to influence many games over the years. It has also been cited by educators that the choose your own adventure category has been a unique and effective method to practice reading comprehension for the reluctant reader (Choose your own adventure [CYOA], n.d.).

Throughout the book series the reader takes on the roll of a protagonist, after reading for some amount of pages the reader is faced with two or more options.

The chosen option has an effect on where the story goes next and a possible effect of what the ending of the story might be like. This cycle is repeated for some amount of times until an ending is reached, the endings may vary from good to bad and anything in between.

The prototype will adapt the ”choose your own adventure” genre by making branching points in the form of interactive scenes much like the reader would have to make an interactive choice when reading a ”choose your own adventure”

book.

2.2.2 Adding to sentences

K12reader (https://www.k12reader.com/) provide a lot of traditional work- sheets and game ideas to practice reading comprehension, sentence building, spelling and more. One such worksheet is another perspective of Rainbow sentences in chapter 2.1.3, see figure 4.

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Figure 4: Worksheet example of a building sentence activity.

In the app Rainbow sentences the strategy was to color code the words according to: who, what, where, why. The user had to build entire sentences with the assistance of the color cue with a finite amount of words. In this exercise the reader is given part of a sentence and instead of a color code provide the reader with a word representing what is expected to create a complete sentence with any word the reader deem appropriate. This exercise also makes use of the key words when and how.

Giving parts of a sentence and letting the reader fill them out themselves is another way of practicing sentence structure and will be adapted into the prototype.

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3 Theory

In order to reach a suitable solution to the defined problems in chapter 1.3, aside from previous studies and related work, additional practical information needs to be acquired. How will a solution be designed and developed? The following sub-chapters aims to answer that question.

3.1 Method

To ensure the correctness of the solution several bases needs to be covered, creating a functional game in itself is not very challenging. Creating a digital learning environment that’s appealing and functional to a wide span of individuals with intellectual disability where each individual may have their own game and learning preferences is a challenge.

Breaking down previous solutions and researching studies in the field of how children with special needs best improve their reading comprehension is a good start. By doing so and comparing the results it’s easy to find common factors and game mechanics, what was successful and what was not? What conclusion can be made as to what mechanics and elements can be integrated in this solution? But this is just the first step.

After gathering information about what has worked and what should work there’s a good base for creating a prototype design that visualize how these mechanics and factors work together to create a well rounded digital learning environment. To confirm the viability of the design, the prototype will be iterated together with professors that are experienced in the area as well as gathering additional input from professional special education pedagogues in the form of interviews.

3.2 Choices of technology

This prototype is developed using Unity as its graphics engine and C# as its scripting language, Unity was part of the given thesis description but below are some comparisons with another popular graphics engine Unreal that explains why Unity could be considered more appropriate for this thesis.

Unity vs Unreal: Unreal is an incredibly powerful graphics engine able to produce quality high end visuals compared to Unity (Gamedesigning, 2020), while we want to achieve a well looking immersed game that appeal to the player. High end visuals is not a primary need for this prototype.

Most important is the expertise and time required to produce a well looking, functional game. This is where Unity stands far above Unreal due to its asset

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store that offers a big variety of assets, many which are free. Unity’s asset store (https://assetstore.unity.com/) offers almost 6000 free assets for its users compared to Unreal’s asset store (https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en- US/store) that offer about 400.

This means that for a large professional team, Unreal engine might be the better choice. However for a small team or even an individual person working under a limited time constraint, Unity is a more appropriate choice.

3.3 Interviews

The interviews with special pedagogues at Tunaskolan were conducted in Swedish and can be found in Appendix A, the following is an English analytical summary of the interviews. Tunaskolan is a special education school for grade 1-9, Mon- ica Shack and Sofi Andersson work with higher grades while Carina B¨ackstr¨om work with lower and middle grades.

As expected the special pedagogues all mention that the level of spelling and reading comprehension that is practiced at a special education school is very individual. B¨ackstr¨om also point out that this is of course dependent on what type of learning disabilities the student has. Shack and Andersson gave a very generalized estimate and commented that students in grade 6/7-9 practice ma- terial that’s taught in grades 3-5 at a regular school.

One of many examples provided by Shack and Andersson is an easy to read newspaper, 8sidor (https://8sidor.se/). The layout is very simple, sentences and paragraphs kept short and precise to be easy to read. There’s also a tool on the page you can use if you highlight a word you can search for synonyms, definition and translate it to many other languages.

B¨ackstr¨om also provided many examples, one of which is a game to build more complex words with smaller words. They would for example spread out a large parachute where the ball rolls to different words, for example to the word ”snow”

and then to the word ”man”, together these words create the word ”snowman”.

3.4 The prototype idea

The idea of this prototype is to provide a flexible and individual game experience to practice reading comprehension but with a focus on practicing sentence structure through an interactive way, the story however is not dynamically created and must be generated by someone (There will be a demo story in this prototype). Note that generating story won’t require understanding of code, it will however require Unity, the building tools for the target platform and a basic understanding of Unity navigation. There will be step by step instructions of how to generate scenes, link the scenes properly to the story tree and build the

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project.

This is a generalized idea made before implementation and the final prototype may differ slightly, but the overall concept should remain the same, see figure 5.

Figure 5: General flow of the prototype game concept.

Story scenes: Each box starting with the word ”Story” is a reading scene in a 3D environment, much like the ”choose your own adventure” books. The only interaction in this scene is for the user to press a button ”next” to get the next scene text until eventually the reading scene concludes and the user enters an interactive 3D environment.

Interactive scenes: The interactive scenes is where the user practice sentence structure by building sentences using words through different game mechanics like drag and dropping words to form sentences, point and click to link different words or through some other kind of user input. Each interactive scene will have two or more ”correct” options where the user pick an expected sentence.

If a correct sentence is built the user will move on to another story branch. If

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an incorrect answer is chosen, the user will enter a side scene that provides hints from the previous story branch of what sentences is expected to be built, at the end of the scene the user will get the choice to load the last interactive scene or restart the story.

Side scenes: These serve as a ”dead end”, the user will be informed that they lost the magician they were chasing or must have looked over something along the way and give hints of what was missed. A user will enter this scene if they built an incorrect sentence in an interactive scene, at the end of this scene the user can either reload the last interactive scene and try again or restart the story completely.

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4 Result

This chapter presents the result of implementing the prototype from chapter 3.4, focusing on the different parts and how they’re meant to provide a solutions to the problems defined in chapter 1.3.

The prototype consists of 53 unique scenes, where a scene could be one camera angle of a village while another scene may be focused on something else in the village. The story demo in the prototype consists of 101 scenes, many of the scenes can be reused while telling a different story. A list of all unique scenes are available in a separate document.

Note that the game is made in Swedish since the target audience for this prototype speak Swedish as their native language.

4.1 Interactive scenes

As explained in the prototype idea in chapter 3.4, the interactive scenes are meant for the user to practice sentence structure through different mechanics and depending on what sentence is built, the story will change accordingly. This prototype features 5 interactive scenes.

When the user submit their answer the words will begin to dance with different colors, after some time they will all turn green or red depending on if the sentence was correct or not. If the sentence was correct there will also be different types of fireworks before loading the new story branch. If the sentence was incorrect, it will simply load the related side scene.

4.1.1 Interactive drag & drop

In the figure below a scene is presented where the user can drag and drop words onto different anchors, in this case the anchor is a table. This scene is inspired by previous solutions found in chapter 2.1.1 and chapter 2.1.2

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Figure 6: Interactive drag & drop.

This scene is limited to a sentence length of eight words. The next figure also presents a drag and drop scene in a different setting.

Figure 7: Interactive drag & drop.

However there is one more difference, the second scene will place words each sentence has in common on the anchor if the words share the same index across all sentences. This is inspired by a previous solution found in chapter 2.2.2.

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4.1.2 Interactive limitless marking

Below is a scene of limitless/unrestricted marking, the user can click a word to mark it and click it again to unmark it.

Figure 8: Interactive unrestricted marking.

This scene handles up to 24 unique words and allows the user to build it in all possible combinations.

4.1.3 Interactive limited marking

The next figure shows a scene based of limited/strict marking, the user can mark one word per row to build up a sentence. This was inspired by a previous solution found in chapter 2.2.2 as well as an interview conducted with special pedagogues found in chapter 3.3.

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Figure 9: Interactive strict marking.

This scene handles 40 unique words (4 unique words per index of a sentence).

4.1.4 Interactive point & click

The next figure presents the final interactive scene in this prototype, here the user will point and click the word of their choice and it will be placed in the first free index of the currently built sentence or returned to its original position.

Much like the second drag & drop scene found in chapter 4.1.1, this scene will place words that share the same index across all sentences on the correct spot in the built up sentence. This is inspired most by the previous solution found in chapter 2.2.2.

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Figure 10: Interactive point & click.

4.1.5 Interactive hint system

Inspired by a previous solution found in chapter 2.1.3, the user can turn on and off a hint system that provides general help in the form of colors. In the drag and drop scenes as seen in the figure below, it will highlight the sentence with the most correct words in a unique color and other words not belonging to that sentence as another color.

Figure 11: Hint system using anchors.

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In the other interactive scenes the user can use their mouse to hover over words, unique words belonging to that sentence will be highlighted with a unique color.

Words that occur in more than one sentence are not highlighted, if the user pull their mouse over a common word only that word will be highlighted.

Figure 12: Hint system using mouseover.

This system is very generalized and isn’t a solution in itself, it does provide some help but one could argue not enough. Several improvements and other approaches using colors could have been taken but it would have required more time.

4.2 Story & side scenes

This chapter covers story & side scenes, these scenes together with the interactive scenes make up the general concept of the prototype inspired by previous solutions found in chapter 2.1.1 and chapter 2.2.1.

The prototype come with a wide variety of scenery from the insides of a smithy, inn, house, mage tower to a village, beach, forest, cave, mines. The prototype scenery is based on a fantasy environment.

4.2.1 Story example 1

Below is an example of a story scene, the story scenes can be connected to another story scene, an interactive scene or be an ending. The user gets to read a page or a few pages of story before moving on to a new scene.

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Figure 13: An example of a story scene inside a smithy.

4.2.2 Story example 2

The following scene is an example of an ending scene, when these are completed the user simply gets returned to the main menu scene.

Figure 14: An example of an ending.

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4.2.3 Side example 1

Similar to a story scene, the user gets to read a page or a few pages of story and hints of what went wrong the last time they built a sentence in an interactive scene. Then the user gets to choose to retry the interactive scene to build a new sentence or return to the main menu.

Figure 15: An example of a side scene.

4.3 Creating new scenes

One problem defined in chapter 1.3 is, how can these game concepts be implemented in a flexible way so that they are reusable on multiple stages of a game without requiring extensive programming skills?

The implemented solution for this problem requires unity navigation to reuse already implemented mechanics and scenery by two different scene templates a few variables and the story to be told. There’s no practical coding involved, there’s a separate document that guides the user through each step through the unity navigation. In the following chapters only the part of entering variables will be shown.

4.3.1 New story scenes

The following figure shows all that’s needed to create a story scene that either is an ending, connects to another story scene or connects to an interactive scene that splits into more story branches.

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Figure 16: Creating an entirely new story scene.

• Environment Prefab & Camera Position is used to decide what scenery to load into the scene. For example, the environment could be a village and the camera position market.

• (Optional) Next Scene is the name of the next scene to be loaded. If left blank the story will come to an end.

• (Optional) Interactive Side Scene, if the next scene is an interactive scene the name of a side scene must also be entered.

• (Optional) Question is the question displayed in interactive scenes to guide the user towards the correct sentences.

• (Optional) Connecting Scenes, this is how the story tree is built up.

If the correct answer at element 0 is submitted, the scene name from connecting scenes at element 0 is loaded.

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• (Optional) Correct Answers, these are the correct sentences to be built in an interactive scene. The sentences are split into words and distributed to word objects.

• Chapter is the title displayed for the story.

• Sentences, each element is a page of story displayed in the scene.

• (Optional) Custom Light, the scenes have set ambient light. If the user wish to make a scene darker or brighter, they have the option to.

4.3.2 New side scenes

The following figure shows the information required to create a side scene. The name of the side scene is passed as a variable when creating a new story scene if the next scene is an interactive scene. See the previous chapter.

Figure 17: Creating an entirely new side scene.

A side scene is basically a simplified story scene.

• Environment Prefab & Camera Position is used to decide what scenery to load into the scene. For example, the environment could be a village and the camera position market.

• Chapter is the title displayed for the story.

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• Sentences, each element is a page of story displayed in the scene.

• (Optional) Custom Light, the scenes have set ambient light. If the user wish to make a scene darker or brighter, they have the option to.

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5 Evaluation

The evaluation of the problems defined in chapter 1.3 are split into two chapters.

chapter 5.1 covers the evaluation of the first problem, what game concepts are appropriate and useful for training reading comprehension?

Chapter 5.2 covers the evaluation of the second problem, how can these game concepts be implemented in a flexible way so that they are reusable on multiple stages of a game without requiring extensive programming skills?

5.1 The prototype

The prototype itself is presented in chapter 4.1 and chapter 4.2. The game was evaluated by five people with professions ranging from special education pedagogues, professor and middle grade pedagogue. They were given a set of instructions to try the essential parts of the game and then answered several questions in a questionnaire.

5.1.1 Test group information

When answering the questionnaire some general information was gathered about the test group, their age, how often they play digital games and what platform they use to play them.

Figure 18: The ages of the prototype test group.

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Figure 19: The digital gaming habits of the prototype test group.

Figure 20: The platforms of choice of the prototype test group.

5.1.2 Evaluation answers

The questionnaire was written in Swedish and the responses were given in Swedish, below are the translated questions and responses. For the unedited Swedish responses, see appendix B in chapter 10.

Do you think the overall concept with a variety of scenes where the user gets to read and then do interactive scenes is a good concept to

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practice reading comprehension?

• It can be good if it’s level adjusted.

• Yes, it is good, but the text and hints must be easier for it to fit our student group at special primary school.

• The concept is good but in this game I experience the text to be too complicated for our student group. Short, clear sentences with ”easier”

choice of words is required.

• Yes, there’s a potential for such a concept, but it’s also very difficult to design, because reading is a very complex activity.

• The concept is exciting, but it would require further work and content.

Figure 21: The choice of game mechanic for building sentences.

Do you think the clues in terms of color are helpful enough?

• No, it was hard to perceive the colored clues, but there may be bugs in the program?

• The clues were good, but there must be much simpler sentence structure with shorter sentences and easier words, for our student group.

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• The colored clues are good and clear but the sentence structure in the game was too advanced.

• The design is currently not quite intuitive enough. It is too difficult to determine what is requested. It is possible to form lots of sentences that are correct and that are related to the story, but which is still not approved.

The instructions are also not crystal clear. The risk is that in the end you sit and take a chance on words to get the right answer instead of experiencing the sentence creating potential in the story.

• The system is somewhat helpful, it helps the user find certain words that belong to a sentence. But further help would be needed.

Additional comments

• It was too much text and difficult to know how to proceed in the game.

• The content that explains what sentence to build is at too high a level for our students. Far too long with complicated words.

• The content text was too vague for our group of students. I see a need for short and clear meaningful paragraphs and sentences.

• Although I have some criticism after trying the prototype, I think it’s fun that you are interested in developing this. Feel free to think about what is important in reading and not ”just” about what can be a correct reading comprehension. That said, reading is complex!

• Interesting work and the concept is, as I said, exciting, but reading comprehension is a complicated area.

5.2 Creating a new story tree

The information covering how to create new story trees is presented in chapter 4.3, this part was evaluated by three people. A professor and two university students. They were given a written guide with step by step instructions of how to create their own story tree in the prototype. Before the evaluation they answered a questionnaire with general questions shared with the test group that evaluated the game. The creation of story trees was evaluated in person in which they were asked a few more questions towards the end of the evaluation.

5.2.1 Test group information

When answering the questionnaire some general information was gathered about the test group, their age, how often they play digital games and what platform they use to play them.

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Figure 22: The ages of the unity test group.

Figure 23: The digital gaming habits of the unity test group.

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Figure 24: The platforms of choice of the unity test group.

5.2.2 Evaluation answers

Towards the end of creating their own story trees the participants were asked a few questions.

Do you find the instructions for modifying and generating new story trees easy to follow?

• All the steps was about the same difficulty, unity could be confusing at times but since you were present and could answer additional questions it wasn’t as difficult as I expected.

• The difficulty wasn’t too bad and at an equal level throughout the testing.

• It could be confusing but I think with some additional practice it would get quite a lot easier.

Is there anything you wish was easier to use or more clearly explained?

• You could think about using short video instructions for each step instead of using pictures. I think it would be much easier to understand, especially if you’re not present.

• Perhaps additional pictures for some steps or some kind of video/stream of the steps could have been the better choice.

• I just think you need to get used to unity with a bit more practice.

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Additional comments

• It was quite fun and interesting to create a story like this without having any coding experience.

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6 Discussion

This chapter will discuss the evaluation in chapter 5 of the result presented in chapter 4.

6.1 The prototype evaluation

As seen in chapter 5.1.1, the majority of the five people that evaluated the prototype are of age ∼50. Everyone plays digital games at least a few times a week, everyone play games on mobile but three people also play on gaming consoles and two play on PC.

6.1.1 Game concepts

When asked about the overall concept of the prototype, using a mix of reading scenes and interactive scenes to practice reading comprehension. The general consensus was that the concept is good and has potential but it’s very difficult to design, especially for children with special needs as their reading levels are very individual and therefore vastly different.

When asked about which interactive scene were best to practice sentence structure there was a clear favorite, point & click. See chapter 4.1.4 where the point

& click scene was presented in the results.

Overall the concept itself was appreciated, but the content was often too difficult or not intuitive enough for the targeted student group. This outcome was expected, for the content to have been more fitting the prototypes content should have been iterated a lot more with the special education pedagogues.

But, this thesis is time limited and was conducted during summer so interactions was also limited. However, the prototype was made to be easily used by someone without extensive coding experience so that story trees may easily be created and adjusted for individual levels.

6.1.2 Colored clues

When asked about the interactive scene clues presented in chapter 4.1.5 there was mixed feedback, but it’s fair to say the overall feedback was that the system could be better and more intuitive.

When the colored clues was designed some choices were made which might make the system seem a bit lackluster. It’s implemented as a game mechanic to help with sentence structure, but it’s also implemented from a standpoint where

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it should be easy to use by someone without any coding experience. See the problem definitions in chapter 1.3.

To make it more intuitive, one could give control to the creator of the story, what word should receive which color. But that would quickly become a mess for someone not used to unity and you’re dealing with 40 unique words in an interactive scene. In order to make it more intuitive without affecting the creation of new story trees a more advanced algorithm would have to be developed. That however is more time consuming and was therefore not part of the prototype.

6.2 The unity evaluation

As seen in chapter 5.2.1, everyone plays digital games at least a few times a week, everyone play games on mobile but two people also play on gaming consoles and one play on PC.

It took the participants ∼40 minutes to create their own story tree with some assistance but for the most part only following written instructions. Creating a story tree includes creating a story scene connected to an interactive scene, an interactive side scene and an ending scene the user may get to by building a correct sentence in an interactive scene.

When asked if the instructions were easy to follow and if there was anything they wished was made more simple, the general consensus was that it wasn’t as difficult as expected. However to make the instructions easier to follow the step by step pictures could be simplified by replacing the pictures and some text with videos. It is quite easy to take a video of your desktop nowadays, and it’s a lot easier to reproduce steps by watching somebody else do it rather then reading how to do it.

6.3 General discussion points

This section covers discussion outside of the evaluation results, such as doing a thesis during a pandemic, an alternative way to approach the problem or thoughts on what could have been done differently.

6.3.1 Setbacks

The two major setbacks during this thesis was the pandemic COVID-19 and the fact that the thesis was done during summer. Both these points led to a lot of individual work and less possibilities for feedback, the pandemic also affected the size and target of the test groups to evaluate the work.

Summer: It is very common that a working person goes on vacation during

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summer, doing a thesis such as this with focus on helping youths with special needs it’s important to iterate the idea and implementation with people experienced in the field and that work with youths with special needs. This was done to a certain extent before summer vacations began, however the majority of the implementation of the prototype was done without any further feedback. This is a possible setback as to why the content of the prototype was experienced as too difficult, see chapter 5.1.2.

COVID-19: Due to the ongoing pandemic, even though this thesis has a focus on youths with special needs it was deemed enough that the results be evaluated by people with experience in the field and not necessarily the target audience.

This especially affects the second evaluation which had to be done in person, in the midst of a pandemic it’s hard to arrange evaluations to be done in person.

6.3.2 Evaluation method & small test groups

This thesis makes use of survey and interviews as evaluation methods, the problem with these types of evaluation methods is that when the test groups are small and while related to the target audience, not the actual target audience itself it quickly becomes hard to backup the results of the evaluation. For more insight of why the small test groups in this thesis, see chapter 6.3.1.

If this was an actual product, the test groups would have needed to be a lot bigger and with the actual target audience being involved. However, as this is a proof of concept and under the circumstances of an on going pandemic, the small test groups are enough to prove the potential of the concept.

6.3.3 Alternative solutions

With more time to put into the prototype and more experience with unity, another solution to let someone without extensive programming knowledge adapt and create their own stories and exercises within the prototype would have been to create a ”world builder” within the prototype itself. The solution as of right now requires the user to make use of unity to create their own story trees and exercises.

A better solution would have been this ”world builder” option, when clicked the user gets to see all available scene templates. A template could be chosen, settings of it adjusted and linked to the prototype story tree. However, creating such a system is time consuming and wouldn’t as easily be maintained as to make use of unity itself which already offers these types of solutions. Using unity is however a lot less user friendly compared to what could be created for the prototype itself.

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7 Conclusions and future work

Overall the feedback for this work has been positive, there’s potential in this type of prototype. It is however difficult and would require a lot more time and parties involved to in a sense, be done right. While the concept was appreciated, its contents was too difficult. For the contents to be more fitting it would need to be iterated with professionals in that field.

The following chapter discuss the outcome of the solutions to the problems defined in chapter 1.3 and the chapter after discuss some potential future work with the prototype.

7.1 Conclusions

• What game concepts can be used to keep the user motivated and engaged to practice their reading comprehension?

This prototype implements a ”choose your own adventure” style concept, inspired by previous solutions found in chapter 2.2.1 and chapter 2.1.1. Five out of five testers appreciated the concept itself, but they also agreed that it would require further work to be successful, especially the content of the game itself, such as shorter and easier text. See chapter 5.1.2 for evaluation answers.

• What game mechanics are appropriate to practice reading comprehension?

This prototype keeps the user input quite simple, it is all done by either clicking objects and buttons or dragging objects around in a scene. As for game mechanics, there are four types of interactive scenes and a hint system. Based on feedback in chapter 5.1.2, there is a clear favorite among the interactive scenes.

Out of five testers, four voted the point & click mechanic presented in chapter 4.1.4 to be the best interactive scene in the game.

The hint system in the form of colored clues found in chapter 4.1.5 received mixed feedback, three out of five testers found the system to be good or helpful to some degree while the other two testers found it hard or not intuitive enough.

But it is clear the system would need further improvements, this was expected and as mentioned in the previous mentioned chapter. The colored clues system would need a much more advanced algorithm.

• How can these game concepts be implemented in a flexible way so that they are reusable on multiple stages of a game without requiring extensive programming skills?

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In this prototype, new story trees can be done without extensive programming skills through unity navigation. It took users without any programming knowledge 40 minutes following a guide and some assistance in person to create their own functional story tree with a story scene, an interactive scene, a side scene and an ending.

Of course they used a computer that already had unity and the project set up.

Based off feedback in chapter 5.2.2, three out of three testers didn’t experience the creation of their own story trees to be too difficult. Two out of three testers admitted they found unity to be confusing at times, which is an expected experience.

Two out of three testers agreed the guide itself for creating a new story tree could be improved, the suggestions were either more step by step pictures or even short video instructions for each step so they could watch and then do it themselves. One tester believed it would become a lot easier with additional practice with unity navigation.

7.2 Future work

Gaming and digital learning is a vast field so the potential improvements for this prototype is near limitless. Aside from the delimitations mentioned in chapter 1.6, based on the evaluation in chapter 5, the hint system in form of colored clues presented in chapter 4.1.5 requires a much more advanced algorithm.

One could also take an algorithmic approach to the problem at hand, building sentences. For example the different words could be divided into groups of adjectives, verbs etc. However, this approach much like an advanced algorithm for the coloring system would take quite some time to develop while keeping the creation of new story trees and sentences to build simple enough to be used in practice by people without any programming knowledge.

Another important improvement would be additional prefabs to create different types of stories. The current prefabs are fantasy environment focused, while fantasy is an appreciated genre not everyone enjoys it. Some would prefer reading a modern story, or maybe even sci-fi or other environments. If the prototype should truly appeal to a broad audience, the flexibility in types of stories its able to tell is important.

Continuing to expand the interactive game mechanics to build sentences, like mentioned many times before. Gaming has almost endless potential, a new interactive scene could be to link words by drawing lines between them in order to form a sentence. Perhaps one could link pictures to words, or make interactive scenes more like mini games to keep the users engaged.

Improvements to what happens when a wrong sentence is built during an interactive scene. While it is possible to pass several combinations of the same

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words as a correct sentence, it is not handled well in its current version. After attending a workshop together with a special needs class, many expressed that they thought for a game to be fun it required punishment when doing something incorrect. While this prototype is meant to be used in a learning environment it is still important to think about the appeal of the game.

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8 References

Choose your own adventure. (n.d.). History of CYOA - Chooseco LLC. Re- trieved 27 May, 2020, from Choose your own adventure. https://www.cyoa.com /pages/history-of-cyoa

Eklund, K., Lyytinen, H., Ronimus, M., & Pesu, L. (2019) Supporting struggling readers with digital game-based learning. Retrieved 28 June, 2020, from SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11423-019-09658-3 Gamedesigning. (2020). Unity vs Unreal: Ultimate Game Engine Showdown.

Retrieved 26 May, 2020, from Gamedesigning. https://www.gamedesigning.org /engines/unity-vs-unreal/

National Center for Education Statistics. (2020). The Condition of Education - Preprimary, Elementary and Secondary Education - Elementary and Secondary Enrollment - Students With Disabilities - Indicator May (2020). Retrieved 26 May, 2020, from National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/

programs/coe/indicator cgg.asp

Reading eggs. (n.d.). Frequently Asked Questions - Learn to Read for Kids - Reading Eggs. Retrieved 27 May, 2020, from Reading eggs. https://readingeggs.

co.uk/info/faqs

Thomson, K. (2012). Rainbow Sentences app for iPad - Mobile Education Store. Retrieved 27 May, 2020, from Mobile Education Store. http://mobile- educationstore.com/apps/sentence-structure-apps/rainbow-sentences

United Nations. (n.d.). Education - United Nations Sustainable Development.

Retrieved 26 May, 2020, from United Nations. https://www.un.org/sustainable development/sustainable-development-goals/

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9 Appendix A - Interviews

Interview with special pedagogues Monica Schack and Sofi Andersson at Tu- naskolan.

1. Vad för ordlekar / stavningsövningar är vanligt förekommande i en särskola?

Eleverna arbetar efter sin niv˚a och har därför olika arbetsmaterial. Eleverna tränar varje vecka p˚a n˚agra egna valda ord fr˚an artiklar fr˚an den lättlästa ny- hetstidningen ”8 sidor”. Dessa ord testar vi sedan stavning p˚a i ”Kahoot!”

(webbaserad fr˚agesport). N˚agra elever tränar även ljudning och stavning i ap- pen ”Läskod”. I det dagliga arbetet i svenska tränar de ocks˚a ord och betydelse i boken ”Tio ord i veckan”.

2. Vad för läsförst˚aelse övningar är vanligt förekommande i en särskola?

Det skiljer sig nog markant, beroende p˚a vilken klass du fr˚agar, men vi utg˚ar fr˚an eleverna vi har i v˚ar klass. Eleverna använder bland annat böckerna ”Lite av varje”, ”Nya Vad var det jag läste”, ”Himmel & pannkaka”. I hel- och halvklass brukar vi jobba med olika teman, t ex ”läsa mellan raderna”, ordspr˚ak, synonymer samt gemensamt tolka artiklar och texter ur olika genrer.

3. Vilken niv˚a av läsförst˚aelse tränas i högstadiet p˚a en särskola?

Kan du ge exempel p˚a ord/meningar?

Niv˚an för v˚ara elever ligger i regel mellan jämförelsevis ˚ak 3-5 (grundskola) med stavningsregler, meningsbyggnad och ord och meningars betydelse. Det är sv˚art att ge specifika exempel, för det är n˚agot vi jobbar med dagligen, och kommer

¨

aven in i andra ¨amnen s˚a som SO, NO och teknik.

4. Hur brukar man hantera om eleven exempelvis stavat fel för att presentera det korrekta svaret p˚a ett lärorikt sätt? (Jag först˚ar att denna fr˚aga kan vara lite sv˚ar besvarad, kanske lättare att beskriva om det finns n˚agra skillnader fr˚an hur man visar korrekt svar i generella skolor.) Ett exempel är att de f˚ar titta p˚a olika alternativ, och p˚a s˚a sätt komma fram till det korrekta svaret. Ljudning är ett annat bra exempel för att de ska upptäcka sina eventuella fel, t ex ng-ljud och dubbelteckning.

5. ¨Ovriga kommentarer.

V˚ara elever ¨ar ganska ˚aldersadekvat (h¨ogstadiet) sett till intressen. Exempelvis gillar de Tik Tok, Youtube, musik (Spotify) och gaming p˚a X-box och PS4.

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Interview with special pedagogue Carina B¨ackstr¨om at Tunaskolan.

1. Vad för ordlekar / stavningsövningar är vanligt förekommande i en särskola?

Eftersom skolformen behöver kompetenta och insiktsfull personal är det bästa för eleverna att alla har känslan till att alls kunna utföra ordlekar / stavn- ingsövningar p˚a ett sätt som f˚angar eleverna. Självfallet har ocks˚a elevernas förutsättningar och specifika funktionsnedsättning betydelse men det är främst mötet mellan skolan och eleven denna som är den första inspirationskällan. Or- dlekar kan ske via tex. ”babblarna, karlstadsmodellen” men sen väver vi in mk ordlekar och stavningsövningar i allas deras lektioner, tex. genom drama.

Vi kan tex. ta ut en stoooor fallskärm där en boll rullar till olika bokstäver, men oftast i v˚art fall till ordlekar. Nu ˚aker bollen till ”SN Ö” och nu till en

”GUBBE” vad blir det d˚a? = SN ÖGUBBE. Vi tränar även en s˚adan g˚ang samspel, olika lägesbegrepp,turtagning kommunikation. Lekar som ”gubben i l˚adan” ”Pomperipossa” etc är ocks˚a väldigt bra ordlekar. Stavning övningar sker individuellt en elev mot en vuxen där vi tex. jobbar med bokstaven B och har först konkreta saker med bokstaven ”B”. Söka saker som är bokstaven ”B”

innan ordbilder v¨avs in.

2. Vad för läsförst˚aelse övningar är vanligt förekommande i en särskola?

Arbetsg˚angen innan vi tex, sätter ig˚ang ordlekar är att jag som lärare gjort en sorts spr˚akanalys p˚a eleven och ˚aterkopplat detta till övrig personal. Vi kan d˚a tex. ha läs / stavingsövningar genom s˚apbubblor, bl˚asa ballonger, bl˚asa ut ljus etc. Biblioteksbesök. Lättlästa böcker, rim sagor och drama. Vi använder oss alltid av teckenkommunikation samt bildkommunikation/pekpratsbilder p˚a väggar tex. för av -p˚a klädning, ”jag är törstig” ”Jag vill p˚a toa” etc. ”Speciella ord” en APP som har dra läsförst˚aelseövningar, en app blandad med ord mot ord, bild mot bild, bild mot ord, ord mot bild. Läsförst˚aelsen kräver ett ak- tivt samspel. Inriktningen mot ämnesomr˚aden m˚aste alltid l˚ata eleverna prova p˚a m˚anga m˚anga g˚anger och f˚a bekräftelse och en sort belöning och det är

¨

aven viktigt att vi som personal anammar deras intressen här och utg˚ar fr˚an deras intressen, olika sammanhang för att locka till deras läsförst˚aelse, utifr˚an utvecklingsniv˚a (och naturligtvis deras kursplan).

3. Vilken niv˚a av läsförst˚aelse tränas i högstadiet p˚a en särskola?

Kan du ge exempel p˚a ord/meningar?

Vi har endast l˚ag-mellan.

4. Hur brukar man hantera om eleven exempelvis stavat fel för att presentera det korrekta svaret p˚a ett lärorikt sätt? (Jag först˚ar att denna fr˚aga kan vara lite sv˚ar besvarad, kanske lättare att beskriva om det finns n˚agra skillnader fr˚an hur man visar korrekt svar i generella skolor.) Alla kommunikativa inryck är bra prestation, huvudsaken är att eleven i första hand först˚ar syftet. Att det blir rätt och att saker och ting s˚a sm˚aningom faller

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p˚a plats är inte prio ett. Större vikt att praktiska saker och ting faller p˚a rätt plats som praktiskt lärande. Rätt buss, rätt nummer, tar mig till rätt plats.

5. ¨Ovriga kommentarer.

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10 Appendix B - Questionnaire responses

The questionnaire was done in Swedish, below are the unedited Swedish responses.

Figure 25: A question about the overall concept of the game.

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Figure 26: A question about the hint system in the interactive scenes.

Figure 27: Additional comments.

Educational reading for youths with special needs