SHARE-IT: School-Home Research Environment through Intelligent Technologies

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASCs) are neurodevelopmental conditions that affect an increasing number of individuals globally, and 1 child in 100 in the UK. Children with ASCs have marked difficulties in social interaction and communication skills and in performing tasks that require initiation of and responding to social actions, such as imitation, turn-taking and collaborative (joint) actions. Many children with ASCs go on to experience a life-time of unemployment and often severe mental health difficulties. There is no cure for ASCs. However, early intervention and consistent support that is also sustained over time and contexts is paramount to improving the child's ability to cope with social situations and, to enhancing their and their caregivers' quality of life, and outlook. Provision of consistent and sustainable support for children in and outside of school is advocated by the autism best practice community and by many schools with specialist provisions for ASC pupils. Modern interventions emphasise consistent support across contexts, and for teachers and parents to share the management of goals for each child through co-creation of learning experiences. Increasingly, teachers and parents look to technology as an effective complimentary intervention that, thanks to growing affordability and efficacy of mobile and cloud computing may provide the basic infrastructure for a continuous and sustainable link between the support given to children at home and at school.

Recently there has been a massive growth in TEIs for Autism, but as with previous teaching-learning innovations, design and research have evolved in a sequential manner, with little direct influence on practice and limited research having been conducted in real-world classrooms. Maturing mobile and cloud computing make an open system for intervention creation and delivery in school and at home viable. Given the calls from the autism best practice community for such an open platform, they make it also necessary, relevant and timely. Artificial Intelligence techniques such as machine learning and gaze-tracking, which are increasingly embedded in everyday technologies, can transform such open platforms from places where ideas and experiences are exchanged, to places that can be co-created dynamically.

The objective of SHARE-IT is to systematically investigate how different personal and mobile devices can be used individually and together to create a scalable intelligent learning environment for children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASCs). The overarching aim is to facilitate continuity of support for children across school, home and other relevant contexts. SHARE-IT has two research questions: (Q1): Can the efficacy of autism interventions be optimized by using technology to interface across school, home and the child's existing therapeutic regime?; (Q2): How can such technological infrastructure be sustained over time through a combination of (i) continuous, voluntary input from teachers and parents and (ii) the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to the real-time tracking and logging of children's behaviours in naturalistic environments?

The potential impact of SHARE-IT is significant as its findings, along with the research process itself, can affect many people in many contexts: teachers in how they deliver support to children at school; parents in how they help their children at home in a way that is consistent with school intervention and in how they cope with the significant demands of caring for a child with an ASC; children in being offered a tailored and on-demand support. Undertaking research in the wild under the EPSRC is crucial to achieving SHARE-IT's ambitions because this mechanism caters for both the engineering effort required and the crucial involvement of stakeholders in the process of creating technology that is relevant and useful to them.

SHARE-IT's aim is to make a difference to the lives of children on the autism spectrum and their parents, by exploring how cutting-edge technologies can be deployed best to improve communication between school and home, and to facilitate co-creation and co-ownership of learning experiences by parents, children and teachers. Technology, when used in the right way, can inspire and motivate children who can be otherwise difficult to engage. It can be used also to actively involve parents in their children's development and learning and provide alternative ways for teachers to tailor the support to the individual children's needs. The potential impact of SHARE-IT is significant as its findings, along with the research process itself, can affect many people in many contexts: teachers in how they deliver support to children at school; parents in how they help their children at home in a way that is consistent with school intervention and in how they cope with the significant demands of caring for a child with an ASC; children in being offered a tailored and on-demand support.

Our work with teachers will contribute to their professional development and we will work with them to find best ways to operationalize the SHARE-IT infrastructure. Involvement of parents at the same time as teachers and children is crucial to understanding the dynamics of school-home communication and the respective roles of the different stakeholders in this communication. Such understanding is necessary for researchers to tailor the technology aimed to support such school-home links, and by teachers and parents to co-ordinate the support they give to the children. The involvement of parents on SHARE-IT brings also another dimension - that of parent education, literacy and empowerment in relation to their children's futures. Specifically, successful involvement of parents from lower income and education backgrounds, as planned in SHARE-IT, can have profoundly positive impact on their and their children's aspirations and success, but will require additional and specially tailored training to enable the parents to take part in the research.

SHARE-IT's industrial partnership is an opportunity to influence the future development of and market for personal and mobile technologies with gaze tracking and Artificial Intelligence that addresses real-life needs of a growing population with ASCs. Our partner has an unrivaled insight into the future commercial potential of home eye tracking systems and will advise SHARE-IT on all aspects of commercialization throughout the project.

SHARE-IT will support collaboration in which academics and non- academics, including our industrial partner, will have the time and scope to build connections as they work together, thereby contributing to instrumental, conceptual and capacity building impact. Instrumental, because we want to influence practice of using technology in creative and exploratory ways to encourage social communication and social skills for children through co-ordinated, informed and equal collaboration between teachers and parents; Conceptual, because we aim to identify the role of school-home communication through advanced intelligent technologies and how such technologies support continuity of experience between different contexts; Capacity building, because through the process of the work, we will be involved in increasing children's and parents' technological skills and learning as well as developing the technical and pedagogical skills of teachers. We will also facilitate knowledge exchange between the users and the industry, to enable industrial partners to develop an understanding of the real needs and potential of the technologies developed by them. As researchers, we will also develop our own skills and expertise in intelligent technology-enhanced interventions design and use in multiple contexts and in addressing how to engage in successful knowledge exchange.