Supporting self-evaluation for children with mental disabilities through Augmented Reality

Self-evaluation is the ability to assess one's work, and is a key element in the psycho-pedagogical development of children with special needs in their path towards autonomy and self-determination. Acquiring this skill requires explicit training and materials, and it is often cumbersome and time-consuming. In this paper we present a study to ascertain to what extent systems based on Augmented Reality (AR) are a suitable and less expensive alternative to help children with cognitive disabilities to train self-evaluation skills in special education schools. For this purpose, we have developed tablet application (BART) that offers assistance to children with special needs to self-evaluate basic arithmetic operations. The system was designed through the involvement of 2 educators, 2 experts on psycho-pedagogy, and 2 software designers. The contribution of this paper is the description of BART, an innovative system for children with special needs and a concrete plan for an empirical study that is to be carried out on a short-term basis. Here we describe the methodology that is to be applied to the proposed study and outline the main expectations about the results and their implications in the issue of self-evaluation skills acquisition for children in special education.