# Cross-cultural evaluation of a web application to support communication and collaboration among stakeholders of the school inclusion of children with ASD

Isabeau Saint-Supery, Hélène Sauzéon, Christelle Maillart, Nicolas Neu, Eric

Meyer, Cécile Mazon

► To cite this version:

Isabeau Saint-Supery, Hélène Sauzéon, Christelle Maillart, Nicolas Neu, Eric Meyer, et al.. Cross-cultural evaluation of a web application to support communication and collaboration among stakeholders of the school inclusion of children with ASD. AAATE 2023 - The 17th International Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe, AAATE, Aug 2023, Paris, France. hal-04147612

HAL Id: hal-04147612

https://inria.hal.science/hal-04147612

Submitted on 6 Jul 2023

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
# Cross-cultural evaluation of a web application to support communication and collaboration among stakeholders of the school inclusion of children with ASD

Isabeau Saint-Supery<sup>a,b</sup>, Hélène Sauzéon<sup>a,b</sup>, Christelle Maillart<sup>c</sup>, Nicolas Neu<sup>c</sup>, Eric Meyer<sup>b</sup>,
Cécile Mazon<sup>a,b,*</sup>

## Abstract

The schooling of children with autism spectrum disorder is a challenge that relies on all stakeholders (families, schools, and medical-social professionals). In many countries, the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is a monitoring tool of the schooling process, implemented by the aforementioned stakeholders, but they face several barriers to the co-education process. The CoEd web app was designed using participatory methods in France, with interactive services for the children's follow-up and the three-way collaboration. CoEd applicability was assessed in Belgian cultural context (Walloon territory), as they experiences similar issues. The results showed comparable results between the two countries. The Belgian audience appreciated CoEd and would be ready to use it in real conditions, as is currently the case in France. Thus, this participatory design work developed a tool that meets the needs expressed by the French participants and those of stakeholders beyond French borders.

## Keywords

cross-cultural assessment, collaboration, coeducation, inclusive education, participatory design, autism spectrum disorder

## Context

The schooling of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a challenge that relies on all stakeholders, mainly: families, schools, and professionals in the medical-social sector. Whole-school approaches and the international classification of functioning, disability, and health (ICF) [1] place collaboration and communication among actors as an essential ingredient in the co-education process to foster the success of the school inclusion of children with ASD.

Due the heterogeneity and severity of ASD symptoms, stakeholders have to deal with various educative adaptations, aids and strategies to meet the children's specific needs in their school life [2,3]. In many countries, the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) paper document is a monitoring tool of the schooling process, notably gathering aids and adaptations. The IEP implementation and follow-up is ensured by the IEP team (parents, teachers, out-of-school professionals), but these stakeholders face several barriers to the co-education process [4–6], e.g., information transmission and three-way communication, collaborative monitoring of chil-

dren's evolution, sharing of support practices (aids, adaptations). In this context, digital tools to support school inclusion are seen as promising solutions. However, existing tools focus either on the student or on the relationships between two parties, always including parents, who are responsible for sharing information to ensure good coordination.

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1:** CoEd interface sample *Left*: profile tab, *right*: skills tab.</figcaption></figure>

The CoEd web application (Fig. 1) was designed using participatory methods based on the needs identified in a French

Copyright: © AAATE and I. Saint-Supery, H. Sauzéon, C. Maillart, N. Neu, E. Meyer & C. Mazon 2023. This is an open-access extended abstract of a contribution (Oral contribution) given at the **AAATE 2023 Conference** in Paris.

It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits copy and reproduction of the material in any medium or format, provided the original author and source

<footnote><sup>a</sup>Active team, U1219 Bordeaux Population Health, Inserm-University of Bordeaux, France</footnote>

<footnote><sup>b</sup>Flowers project team, Inria center of the university of Bordeaux, France</footnote>

<footnote><sup>c</sup> Research Unit for a life-Course perspective on Health and Education, University of Liege, Belgium</footnote>

<footnote>*Corresponding author: cecile.mazon@u-bordeaux.fr</footnote>
context [7]. CoEd offers features directed toward the chil-
dren's follow-up and the three-way collaboration of their
caregivers through interactive services. Parents, teachers and
out-of-school professionals can access to a child folder whose
content can be updated at any time to reflect the evolution
of the child and daily practices. Since collaboration and com-
munication issues are partly common with the needs of Bel-
gian stakeholders, we conducted a study to assess the ap-
plicability of the CoEd web application and determine the
transferability of this tool to another cultural context in the
Walloon territory.

Methodology

Forty-two participants (21 French and 21 Belgian) were re-
cruited among parents, teachers and medical-social profes-
sionals. A common evaluation protocol was used to conduct
an ergonomic evaluation of the CoEd tool in France and
Wallonia. Based on realistic fictitious cases (persona
method), we created usage scenarios to test the envisaged
features on a high-fidelity interactive mock-up. These sce-
narios were adapted to the role of the targeted user, namely
parents, teachers, and extracurricular stakeholders. We used
objective measures and subjective measures to evaluate us-
ability, user experience, mental workload, and self-determi-
nation elicited by the tool. To objectively assess the usability
of CoEd, screen-recorded sessions were annotated to extract
navigation performance measures, that is, time to complete
each scenario and average number of active interactions, as
well as verbal comments made by the participants. At the
end of the session, participants answered to several stand-
ardized questionnaires to assess usability (System Usability
scale [8]), user experience (User Experience Questionnaire
[9]), cognitive load (NASA-TLX, [10]), as well as custom-
built questionnaire to assess elicited self-determination (in-
spired from [11]), perceived difficulty (0-10 scale) and ques-
tions related to their perceptions and intention to use the
CoEd application.

Results and Discussion

The analysis of the results shows comparable results between
the two countries: usability and user experience were excel-
lent, with low mental workload and a strong sense of self-
determination elicited by the application. Few differences
were observed between the French and Belgian studies, sug-
gesting that the CoEd web application is transferable to a
similar sociocultural context. The Belgian audience appreci-
ated the application prototype and would be ready to use it
in real conditions, as it is currently the case in France (on-
going field study). Thus, this participatory design work made
it possible to develop a tool that not only meets the needs
expressed by the French participants but also meets the
needs of an educational community beyond French borders.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank B. Mendiboure from the ARI asso-
ciation; M. Sagel and S. Gouleau from the Academy of Bor-
deaux, for their help in designing the web-app, recruiting par-
ticipants and disseminating the project. Thanks to parents,

teachers and health and well-being professionals for their
time and feedbacks on the web app. We thank also the sup-
port provided by our financial partners, the FIRAH,
the Klésia, the CCAH and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.

References

[1] World Health Organization. International classification of functioning, disability and health: Children & youth version; ICF-CY. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2007.

[2] Anthony N, Campbell E. Promoting Collaboration Among Special Educators, Social Workers, and Families Impacted by Autism Spectrum Disorders. Adv Neurodev Disord. 2020;4(3):319-24.

[3] Bateman KJ, Schwartz IS, Gauvreau AN. It Takes a Team: Working Together to Meet the Needs of Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder in an Inclusive Setting. Incl Pract. 2022 Nov;1(4):132-8.

[4] Garcia-Melgar A, Hyett N, Bagley K, McKinstry C, Spong J, Iacono T. Collaborative team approaches to supporting inclusion of children with disability in mainstream schools: A co-design study. Res Dev Disabil. 2022 Jul;126:104233.

[5] Saggers B, Tones M, Dunne J, Trembath D, Bruck S, Webster A, et al. Promoting a Collective Voice from Parents, Educators and Allied Health Professionals on the Educational Needs of Students on the Autism Spectrum. J Autism Dev Disord. 2019 Sep;49(9):3845-65.

[6] Shahidullah JD, McClain MB, Azad G, Mezher KR, McIntyre LL. Coordinating Autism Care Across Schools and Medical Settings: Considerations for School Psychologists. Interv Sch Clin. 2020 Nov;56(2):107-14.

[7] Mazon C, Etchegoyhen K, Saint-Supery I, Amestoy A, Bouvard M, Consel C, et al. Fostering parents-professional collaboration for facilitating the school inclusion of students with ASD: design of the “ToGather” web-based prototype. Educ Technol Res Dev. 2022 Feb;70(1):231-62.

[8] Brooke J. A "Quick and Dirty" Usability Scale. In: Jordan PW, Thomas B, McClelland IL, Weerdmeester B, editors. Usability Evaluation In Industry [Internet]. 0 ed. CRC Press; 1996

[9] Laugwitz B, Held T, Schrepp M. Construction and Evaluation of a User Experience Questionnaire. In: Holzinger A, editor. HCI and Usability for Education and Work [Internet]. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg; 2008 [cited 2023 Mar 8]. p. 63-76. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 5298).

[10] Cegarra J, Morgado N. Étude des propriétés de la version francophone du NASA-TLX. EPIQUE 2009 5ème Colloq Psychol Ergon. 2009;233-9.

[11] Vallerand RJ, Pelletier LG, Blais MR, Briere NM, Senechal C, Vallieres EF. The Academic Motivation Scale: A Measure of Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Amotivation in Education. Educ Psychol Meas. 1992 Dec;52(4):1003-17.