Abstract
The educational activities combined with the use of modern technology and focused on the field of natural sciences, acquire special interest when directed to students who fall into the spectrum of high-functioning autism. In this light, an educational digital software (serious game) was designed and developed with the aim of assisting the teaching of the basic Elementary Physics concepts and, on the other hand, controlling the assimilation and understanding of students with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder. Our research sample consists of 16 elementary school students of the 5th and 6th grades, eight of whom have a certified diagnosis of high-functioning autism spectrum disorder, while the remaining eight are of typical development. The results of the research revealed that the use of this digital application allows the processing, the visual application, the virtual experimental application, and the addressing of everyday physical issues in a pleasant manner, thus contributing to a better understanding of physics concepts, but also to the prevalence of knowledge on the part of students with ASD, while at the same time contributing to the control of the cognitive level of students by teachers.
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This paper has been financed by the funding programme “MEDICUS”, of the University of Patras.
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Karavasilis, A., Tsihouridis, C., Batsila, M., Vavougios, D. (2023). A Serious Game as an Educational Tool to Teach Physics to High Functioning Autism Students. In: Auer, M.E., Pachatz, W., Rüütmann, T. (eds) Learning in the Age of Digital and Green Transition. ICL 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 633. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26876-2_82
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