Towards Ubiquitous Learning Situations for Disabled Learners

Nesrine Ben Salah

, Ines Bayoudh Saadi

and Henda Ben Ghezala

National School of Computer Science, Manouba University, RIADI Research Laboratory, Tunis, Tunisia

Keywords: Ubiquitous Learning, Disabled Learners, Learning Situation, Learning Process, Situation Identification,

Ontology Representation.

Abstract: Adaptation in ubiquitous learning environment is a major concern in research work, especially for disabled

learners. A number of studies have examined context-aware learning systems, but the learning situation has

rarely been taken into account, and mainly for learners with disabilities. There is a lack of studies on the

description and identification of learning situations for disabled learners. Therefore, these situations need to

be well defined, to ensure that all features, including the guidance of the learning process, are properly adapted

to this particular type of learners. The identified situation is linked to a situation model called a typical

situation. In this paper, we propose an ontology for ubiquitous typical learning situations relating to disabled

learners and more specifically, to those with sensory disabilities. We will then be able to refer to these

situations in order to identify the observed learning situations during the execution of the learning process.

This identification will then be used to recommend and guide the learning process of learners with disabilities.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the Situation Awareness (SA) has

become a critical success factor for adaptive systems

(DAniello and al., 2014). As technology evolves,

many complex and dynamic systems have been

created, affecting the ability of humans to act as

effective and timely decision-makers to exploit these

systems (Endsley, 2017). The learner's situation

awareness will be presented as a crucial construct

upon which decision-making and performance in

such systems lie.

In a situation-aware ubiquitous learning

environment, everything is adapted according to the

learning situation of the learner. And when it comes

to a disabled learner, this adaptation also takes into

consideration his type of disability. However,

disabled learners may have a different learning

context or experience a given learning context

differently from non-disabled learners (Salah, N. B.

and al., 2019). For instance, accessibility features are

particularly important for disabled learners. This

gives rise to the need to describe and identify a

specific learning situation for them.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7217-5676

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7419-3800

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6874-1388

Several learning situations have been proposed in

the literature. However, these situations are specific

to non-disabled learners, as the case of learning

situations proposed by Gwo-Jen Hwang in (Hwang,

2006). The situation awareness has been used to

promote adaptation. We can cite the work described

in (Saâdi and Hamdani, 2019) where authors

proposed recommendations using ubiquitous learning

situations. We also mention the work of DAniello

(DAniello and al., 2015) in which authors proposes a

prototypical Decision Support System supporting

learners in self-regulating their learning processes

based on Situation Awareness approach. Finally, in

(Souabni, R. and al., 2019), authors propose a

multidimensional framework dedicated for situation-

aware u-learning systems. It helps to understand,

analyse and describe in-depth a particular aspect of

situation awareness in u-learning systems

There is a lack of description of ubiquitous

learning situations for disabled learners. This

description is essential for adapting learning systems

to disabled learners according to their learning

situation.

144

Ben Salah, N., Saadi, I. and Ben Ghezala, H.

Towards Ubiquitous Learning Situations for Disabled Learners.

DOI: 10.5220/0009829201440151

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Software Technologies (ICSOFT 2020), pages 144-151

ISBN: 978-989-758-443-5

In this paper, we will propose an ontology to

describe ubiquitous learning situations related to

disabled learners and more specifically to those with

sensory disabilities (visual or auditory). The main

contribution of this paper is the proposal of new

ubiquitous learning situations ontology for disabled

learners.

The rest of the paper is organized as follow.

Section 2 presents the conceptual background. The

proposal of ubiquitous learning situation for disabled

learner is given in Section 3 while Section 4

demonstrates an illustrative example through a

typical case study. Finally, conclusions are presented

in section 5. They review the main results and discuss

future works.

2 CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND

2.1 Ubiquitous Learning Systems

Several ubiquitous learning systems have been

proposed in the literature. These systems support

users in their learning and teaching activities using

embedded and networked computing technologies,

sensors and actuators. (Souabni and al., 2016)

Context is a key element of an architecture based

on ubiquitous computing, because it is at the center of

the adaptation mechanisms advocated by the so-

called context-sensitive systems. These systems are

characterized by their capacity to adapt their

operation in order to increase their usability and

efficiency by taking into account the surrounding

context.

However, it is more convenient for ubiquitous

learning systems to treat more significant data than

low-level sensor ones. They must understand the

meaning of what they perceive. It may be useful to

interpret detected low-level context pieces or to

combine low-level and/or interpreted ones to get

more abstract and relevant context. Subsequently, it

is of great importance for context-aware learning

systems to proceed with a high abstraction of detected

context information pieces which is known as the

situation identification.

2.2 Situation and Situation Awareness

Recent attention to the learning situation was made

by Pernas in (Pernas and al., 2014) in order to

promote the detection of a rich learning situation and

to provide a conscious learning of the situation.

The situation awareness process was widely

defined in cognitive studies; the most referred

definition, even in computer system field, is stated by

Endsley as “the perception of the elements in the

environment within a volume of time and space, the

comprehension of their meaning, and the projection

of their status in the near future” (Endsley, 2000).

In human factor studies, the most referenced and

recognized situation awareness process model is the

one proposed by Endsley (Endsley, 2017). As stated

by authors in (Kokar and al., 2009), Endsley's

cognitive situation awareness process was used as a

justification for the definition of the situation

awareness process performed by the system.

The detection and the inference (interpretation

and/or aggregation) are main steps of the situation

awareness process. This process is able to abstract the

current state of user's situation (Souabni and al.,

2018).

2.3 Disabled Learners

A medical model approach to disability is still very

common. This considers the disadvantages

experienced by disability people to be the result of

their disabilities and focuses on individual solutions

of trying to overcome these disabilities and making

the disabled person more like a non-disabled one.

However, organisations of disabled people prefer a

social model approach which focused on the barriers

they experience, including as a result of both negative

attitudes and the mismatch between their needs and

the design of services, products and systems. (WHO,

1980)

A given learning environment may include

several types of learners, including both disabled and

non-disabled learners. We distinguish between

learner with different and specific needs (disabled and

non-disabled learners). Disability is still most

commonly considered from a medical model

perspective, leading to a deficit-based focus. This

then leads to categories based on the particular

impairment (WHO, 1980), such as physically

disabled, visually impaired, hearing impaired and

cognitively impaired.

In this paper, we are interested in sensory

handicaps (Kavcic, 2005): Visual impairments

(blindness, partial sight and color blindness): include

the range from low vision to full blindness, where the

user cannot use the visual display at all.

Hearing impairments (deafness and hearing loss):

have difficulties detecting sounds or distinguishing

auditory information from the background noise.

Deaf individuals cannot receive any auditory

information at all. Many of them communicate

through the Sign Language.

Towards Ubiquitous Learning Situations for Disabled Learners

145

Most learners with disabilities are able to employ

technical aids usually referred to as assistive

technology. Several assistive technologies are

available in the different learning systems (Voice

recognition programs, screen readers, etc.). However,

the need is different when it comes to a situation-

aware ubiquitous learning system. Indeed, learners

are learning while moving and their context is also

changing.

In addition to the accessibility of the course

content, a disabled learner must be guided in his

learning process. Since this is not a face-to-face

learning and since it is without the presence of a

teacher, the learner is generally not accompanied. It

is for this reason that the identification of the learning

situation is a fundamental step in ensuring a smooth

learning process.

3 PROPOSAL OF UBIQUITOUS

LEARNING SITUATION FOR

DISABLED LEARNERS

For learning a new concept, the system must detect

the context and analyze it in order to associate a

typical learning situation (from a pre-established list

of typical situations) with the contextual situation

observed. In what follows, we define the process to

follow in order to define the new learning situations

for disabled learners in ubiquitous learning

environment. The ubiquitous learning situation

definition process for disabled learners, as depicted in

Fig. 1, is a two-phase process and each phase contains

two steps.

Figure 1: Ubiquitous Learning situation definition process

for disabled learners.

3.1 Situation Description

A hierarchical approach that models the ubiquitous

learning context is described in (Salah, N. B. and al.,

2019). This approach presents an overview of an

ontology-based context model for situation-aware

ubiquitous learning systems. This context considers

learners with and without disabilities.

We briefly recall the ontology described in (Salah,

N. B and al., 2019) so that we can use it in the rest of

our process. Fig. 2 presents the hierarchy of the

classes of the proposed ontology as well as the data

property and object property.

3.1.1 Step A.1 Selection of Required Context

Element for Situation Description

Many valued context elements are used to infer a

situation however only some context information

values associated to some context elements are used

to describe a typical situation. In order to define

typical ubiquitous learning situations for disabled

learners, we consider the following contextual

elements, which are useful for the definition. Each

contextual element is described by values.

To facilitate this step, we consider in this paper

only one value of the two contextual information

"Learning preference" and "Facilitation preference"

which are "Real World Learning" and "Online

Guidance" respectively. The following table (Table

1) describes the contextual elements as well as the

values taken into account in our study for the

proposition of the typical learning situations.

We recall that the notion of "learner's peers" was

introduced by authors in (Hwang and al., 2008). This

notion has been detailed by the authors in (Souabni

and al., 2018) who describe peer helper as a person

who help the learner during his/her learning for a

given concept and the peer learners as learners who

cooperate with the learner to learn the same learning

concept.

Table 1: Required context elements.

Context Elements Values

Cooperation Level

Non-Cooperative

Communicative

Participative

With Initiative

Insightful

Useful

Disability Type

Hearing Impairment

Visual Impairment

Facilitation Preference Online Guidance

Learning Preference Real World Learning

Learning Style

Reflector

Pragmatist

Theorist

Peer Helper Boolean

Peer Learner Boolean

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Figure 2: A hierarchical view of the key ontology classes, object-properties and data-type properties.

3.1.2 Step A.2 Mapping between Context

Elements Values and Atomic

Situations

The current learning situation definition of the

disabled learner is done by referring to typical

learning situations. Each typical situation is

composed by a list of atomic situations. These latter

are described by values of contextual elements that

represent the identification criteria. The relationships

between these concepts are described in Fig. 3.

Figure 3: Relation between Typical Situation, Atomic

Situation and Context Elements.

Subsequently, we adopt the approach described in

(Hwang and al., 2011), in order to add new atomic

situations that are specific to disabled learners. For

example, if the context element “Cooperation level”

has the value “Insightful”, “Useful”, “With initiative”

or “Participative”, and the learner is in an

environment where there are Peer helper and / or Peer

Learner, we can say that we are in the learning atomic

situation “Cooperative learning”.

We also take the example of a learner who has a

visual impairment. The type of visual impairment is

“Blindness”. The learners atomic learning situation

will then be “Learning with blindness disability”. The

atomic situations and their identification criteria are

listed in table 2.

Table 2: Identification criteria for atomic situations.

Identification

criteria

Identification Value Atomic

situations

Learning

preference

Real World

Learning in

the Real

world

Facilitation

preference

Online Guidance

Learning with

Online

guidance

Learning

Style

Type Nature

Hearing

Impairment

Hearing

Loss

Learning with

hearing loss

Disability

Deafness

Learning with

deafness

disability

Visual

Impairment

Partial

Sight

Learning with

partial sight

disability

Blindness

Learning with

blindness

disability

Cooperation

Level

Non cooperative

Individual

Learning

Insightful

Useful

With initiative

Participative

Cooperative

Learning

Peer Learner True

Peer Helper True

Towards Ubiquitous Learning Situations for Disabled Learners

147

3.2 Situation Definition

The definition of the learning situation is composed

of two steps. The first deals with the formulation of

atomic situation identification rules while the second

presents the definition of typical situation. Indeed, the

identification of the learning situation for learners

with disabilities is the ability to deduce the situation

from the aggregation of atomic situations already

identified.

3.2.1 Step B.1 Formulation of Atomic

Situation Identification Rules

In order to determine the situation that most

characterizes the disabled learner's current learning

situation, we propose the identification rules for the

atomic situations that will later compose the typical

learning situations.

Here are three examples of rules that describe the

following atomic situations: “Learning with hearing

loss Disability”, “Learning with partial sight

disability” and “Cooperative Learning”. These rules

are described in Fig. 4, 5 and 6.

Figure 4: Identification rule of the atomic situation

“Learning with hearing loss Disability”.

Figure 5: Identification rule of the atomic situation

“Learning with partial sight disability”.

Figure 6: Identification rule of the atomic situation

“Learning by problem solving”.

Taking the example of a learner with a hearing

impairment and to whom we have performed a test to

determine his hearing level. If the result of this test

gave that learner has a hearing level equal to “Mild

hearing loss” or “Moderate hearing loss” (represented

by the values “1” and “2” respectively in the ontology

described in (Salah, N. B. and al., 2019)), the learner

will be in the atomic situation “learning with hearing

loss disability”.

3.2.2 Step B.2 Definition of Typical

Situation

A typical situation is considered as a composite one

for which a list of atomic situations is attached. Based

on those atomic situations, we propose twelve typical

situations for disabled learner in a situation-aware

ubiquitous learning environment. The mapping

between atomic situations and typical situations is

given in Table 3.

Table 3: Atomic and typical situations.

Atomic Situations Typical situations

Cooperative Learning, learning

with deafness disability, learning

with online guidance, learning by

data collection, Learning in the

real world

Cooperative data

collection with

deafness disability

Individual Learning, Learning

with deafness disability, Learning

with online guidance, Learning in

the real world, Learning by object

identification

Identification of

real-world object

with deafness

disability

Individual learning, Learning with

deafness disability, Learning with

online guidance, Learning in the

real world, Learning by

experimentation, Learning by

problem solving

Problem solving

via

experimentation

with deafness

disability

Cooperative Learning, Learning

with hearing loss disability,

Learning with online guidance,

Learning by data collection,

Learning in the real world

Cooperative data

collection with

hearing loss

disability

Individual Learning, Learning

with hearing loss disability,

Learning with online guidance,

Learning in the real world,

Learning by object identification

Identification of

real-world object

with hearing loss

disability

Individual learning, Learning with

hearing loss disability, Learning

with online guidance, Learning in

the real world, Learning by

experimentation, Learning by

problem solving

Problem solving

via

experimentation

with hearing loss

disability

Cooperative learning, Learning

with blindness disability, Learning

with online guidance, Learning by

data collection, Learning in the

real world

Cooperative data

collection with

blindness

disability

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Table 3: Atomic and typical situations (cont.).

Atomic Situations Typical situations

Individual learning, Learning with

blindness disability, Learning with

online guidance, Learning in the

real world, Learning by object

identification

Identification of

real-world object

with blindness

disability

Individual learning, Learning with

blindness disability, Learning with

online guidance, Learning in the

real world, Learning by

experimentation, Learning by

problem solving

Problem solving

via

experimentation

with blindness

disability

Cooperative learning, Learning

with partial sight disability,

Learning with online guidance,

Learning by data collection,

Learning in the real world

10=

Cooperative data

collection with

partial sight

disability

Individual learning, Learning with

partial sight disability, Learning

with online guidance, Learning in

the real world, Learning by object

identification

11=

Identification of

real-world object

with partial sight

disability

Individual learning, Learning with

partial sight disability, Learning

with online guidance, Learning in

the real world, Learning by

experimentation, Learning by

problem solving

12=

Problem solving

via

experimentation

with partial sight

disability

We consider the example described in Section 3

(Step A.2) where the atomic situation of the learner

was “Learning with blindness disability”. If in

addition, the system has detected through the value of

the detected contextual elements that this learner is

also in the following situations: “Individual learning”,

“Learning with online guidance”, “Learning in the

real world”, “Learning by experimentation” "and

“Learning by problem solving”.

According to the identified atomic situations, we

implement rules to define the learner’s learning

situation. OWL does not provide facilities to create

inferences about individuals. This is possible through

the combination of OWL with SWRL (W3C

Semantic Web Rule Language), since it allows the

definition of rules expressed in terms of OWL

concepts. Thus, SWRL was chosen to describe the

situation definition rules. It will then detect that the

typical learning situation of this learner is “STH9 =

Problem solving via experimentation with blindness

disability”. This rule and other rules examples are

descripted in Table 4.

4 ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE

Let’s consider the learner “Learner 1” who has a

partial sight disability (Visual Impairment Class). He

prefers online guidance (Facilitation Preference

Class) to support learning. The learner like to

understand the theory behind the actions and need to

be able to see how to put the learning into practice in

the real world (Learning Style and Learning

preference Classes). He is learning on his own and did

not enjoys interaction (Cooperation level Class).

Table 4: Learning Situation Definition rules.

Learning

Situations

Rules definition

(HasVisualAcuity (?a,3) ∨HasVisualAcuity (?a,4) ∨ HasVisualAcuity (?a,5) ∨ HasVisualAcuity

(?a,6)) ∧ Has_Disability (?a,Visual_Impairment) ∧ HasLearningPreference(?a,RealWorllearning) ∧

Has_Learning_Style (?a,Pragmatist) ∧ Has_Learning_Style (?a,Theorist) ∧

(HasFacilitationPreference(?a, OnlineGuidance)  Has_Situation(?a,

Problem_solving_via_experimentation_with_blindness_disability)

Has_Disability (?a, HearingImpairment) ⋏ ((HasHearingRank(?a,3) ∨ HasHearingRank(?a,4)) ∧

HasLearningPreference(?a,RealWorllearning) ∧ HasLearningStyle(?a,Reflector) ∧

(HasFacilitationPreference(?a, OnlineGuidance)  Has_Situation(?a,

CooperativeDataCollectionWithDeafnessDisability)

Has_Disability (?a, HearingImpairment) ⋏ ((HasHearingRank(?a,3) ∨ HasHearingRank(?a,4)) ∧

HasLearningPreference(?a,RealWorllearning) ∧ (HasFacilitationPreference(?a, OnlineGuidance) ∧

Has_Learning_Style (?a,Reflector)  Has_Situation(?a, Identification_of_real-

world_object_with_deafness_disability)

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149

In what follows, we will try to identify the typical

situation of this learner. Through the described

scenario, we can extract the identification criteria and

their values which are described in table 5.

Table 5: Values of the identification criteria.

Identification criteria Values

Disability = Visual Impairment Partial sight disability

Facilitation preference Online Guidance

Learning Style Pragmatic / Theorist

Learning Preference Real world learning

Cooperation Level Non-Cooperative

Some context information, are detected using

sensors. They come in part from the answers to

questionnaires or tests, such as the visual impairment

test. Generally, a Snellen chart is used for visual

acuity testing. The different values and levels of

visual acuity are described in (Salah, N. B. and al.,

2019).

During execution, identification rules are verified.

Based on the detected context in the described

scenario, the inference engine will execute the rules

that correspond to the mapping between the detected

contextual elements, their values and the

corresponding atomic situations (AS).

The different atomic situations identified in this

case are:

AS1: Learning with partial sight disability

AS2: Learning with Online guidance

AS3: Learning by problem solving

AS4: Learning in the Real world

AS5: Individual Learning

The application of the rules for defining learning

situations allows us to define the current learning

situation of this learner which is in this case, STH12

“Problem solving via experimentation with partial

sight disability” for the learner “Learner 1”. The

definition rule applied to define this situation is

described as follow:

Fig. 7 illustrates a simplified representation of the

typical learning situation definition process for this

illustrative example.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presented an approach for proposing new

ubiquitous learning situations for disabled learners. A

brief review of the literature showed the lack of a

specific learning situation for the disabled learner.

This proposal was illustrated by a case study through

which we developed a reasoning that describes the

typical learning situation for a disabled learner given

according to the proposed identification rules.

The proposal of typical learning situations for

learners with disabilities will enable us to provide

accessible guidance for these learners, based on their

Figure 7: Illustrative Example.

HasVisualAcuity (?a,1) ∨ HasVisualAcuity

(?a,2)) ∧ Has_Disability (?a,Visual_Impairment)

∧ HasLearningPreference(?a,RealWorllearning)

∧ Has_Learning_Style (?a,Pragmatist) ∧

Has_Learning_Style (?a,Theorist) ∧

(HasFacilitationPreference(?a, OnlineGuidance)

Has_Situation(?a,

Problem_solving_via_experimentation_with_par

tialSi

disabilit

)

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identified ubiquitous learning situation. With these

tips, we can recommend the most appropriate

learning strategy for the learner in a given ubiquitous

learning situation. Another future work that concerns

uncertainty in these ubiquitous environments, we will

then consider, to give a degree of confidence by

proposing a fuzzy ontology to describe the context

and ubiquitous learning situations. Large-scale

experimentation is feasible for future work.

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