Development and evaluation of skill teaching software for parents of individuals with intellectual disability to teach self-care and domestic skills

Individuals with intellectual disabilities have deficits in the academic, social, language and self-care skills evidently and they need special education. Their life qualities can be improved with appropriate social aid and education. Because they spend most of their time with their family, the role of their parents in their life and education is crucial. However the most of parents of individuals with intellectual disabilities have not enough knowledge about how to educate their children at home. Thus it is very important to train and support families about this issue. Previous studies show that parents can teach skills to their children effectively after being trained about skill teaching. It can be hard, expensive, and time consuming to gather families in one place and time. Fortunately at this point computer, internet and mobile technologies can make it possible to train and support families independently of time and place. Common and well accepted methods in education of individuals with intellectual disabilities are generally the methods of behaviorist approach and applied behavior analysis. There are various researches which prove that the applied behavior analysis can be used effectively. Applied behavior analysis requires the arranging of environmental conditions systematically. Thus it is very important for families to know and use the applied behavior analysis effectively. In this research, applied behavior analysis will be used by parents in the skill teaching activities. The purpose of this research is to develop mobile skill teaching software which will be used by adult individuals with intellectual disabilities and their parents to teach daily life skills, and to investigate the effectiveness of the software developed and to investigate the views of participants who used the software developed. Research consists of two basic stages: software development and investigating the effectiveness of the software. In software development stage, design based research methodology was used. Design based research has a loop of design, decision making, analysis and examining the design in the process of development and research to design learning environments and to design and produce learning theories. In investigating the effectiveness of the software stage, four parents used the software and performed skill teaching activities, and the data, collected from these skill teaching activities, was evaluated. In this research, qualitative and quantitative data was collected from various sources like semi-structured interviews, video records, information entered by users in the software and software usage records. According to the results obtained in the investigating the effectiveness of the software stage, individuals with intellectual disability learned an independent living skill in the teaching sessions performed by the participants using the software developed. This situations shows that teaching sessions in which the software is used, are effective.