KEY FACTORS TO USE MOBILE DEVICES IN THE EDUCATION OF STUDENTS HAVING SPECIFIC EDUCATION NEEDS

The special education can be defined as a set of personal and material resources available to the education system to satisfy permanent (for the whole schooling period) or transitory (for a limited period) specific learning needs of some specific students.

During the last decade, the use of educational software for lightweight laptops, tablets or smartphones is continuously increasing and this phenomenon is considered a relevant factor to improve the educational quality of students having special needs.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to highlight that there are different factors that prevent the continuous use of educational software for lightweight laptops, tablets or smartphones in the special education context:
1) Diversity of situations that require special support to the educational processes.
2) Specific educational objectives to achieve through the use of educational software for lightweight laptops, tablets or smartphones.
3) Contextual characteristics that influence the sustainable use of educational software to support specific special educational support.
4) Great diversity, variety and amount of specific solutions to support the specific situations requiring special education.

Due to these factors, professionals have difficulties to select specific software solutions that better fit to their needs. Even more, in some cases, they do not have knowledge and training regarding the specific usability and technical effectiveness criteria to consider when they are deciding the selection and adoption of a specific technical solution.

As a previous step to create a model to evaluate and certify software solutions to support special education, it is necessary to identify key issues that are effective to manage to promote a long-term sustainable use of software solutions in specific special education environments.

To address this aim, this article presents the results of a research work whose specific goals are:
- Identify key enablers that promote or enable the effective use of educational software in the education of students having special needs.
- Identify key difficulties and barriers that prevent the introduction of educational software in pedagogical processes and initiatives of students having special needs.
- Categorize and organize the enablers and barriers in specific groups and by their relevance for different special education communities.

The research method used to achieve these goals was based on structured interviews using a pre-defined questionnaire because they permit to identify conclusions from the participants using statistical analysis but giving the opportunity to obtain qualitative feedback to enrich statistical evidence. In the scope of this research, 90 people were interviewed including teachers and other professionals involved in special education, students from the different communities requiring special education support) and their families.

The key issues that contribute to introduce successfully a software solution in special education that were identified as result of this research work are organized in the following categories: educational pertinence, pedagogic effectiveness, user centred approach, emotional focus, usability, sustainability (economical, organizational and technological), security management, ethical issues and added value.

A full version of this article will include a more complete description of the enablers and barriers identified in this research work.