SUCCESS4All is a European project which aims to support students by providing online education together with methodological guides for all. The project during the first year designed and developed a digital platform tailored to students’ needs. Information and updates about the project can be found here:
More project activities:
- Needs Analysis
One of the first activities of the project was a complete needs analysis that lasted for the whole first year of the project life. The final report with the definitive results is still under work and it will be released during summer 2022
This analysis aimed to provide a comprehensive view of the landscape of traditional educators moving to remote pedagogy, especially concerning the challenges of supporting students with disabilities and the crucial role of caregivers. It focuses on the new need to adapt traditional learning design and adopt new pedagogical approaches and associated training needs. As a result, we analyzed the users’ needs by looking at their real experiences crossing the existing literature, and the results of an ad hoc realized survey. The latter contained three sub-questionnaires: one dedicated to caregivers, one to teachers, and one to therapists. The survey collected 469 answers from the three categories in the six countries participating in the project.
- Literature Review
The literature review study was conducted with the purpose to review international research papers that may help to understand challenges of online learning for children with SEND during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the review, Children with SEND have suffered considerably because of school closure, with the burden falling disproportionately on those with social disadvantages. The findings from this knowledge synthesis identified challenges of online education for children with SEND and the strategies used to overcome them. This real-time analysis generated through our knowledge synthesis will be useful in developing evidence-based policy and practices during the current pandemic and will be transferable into future pandemic contexts.
Full text of the published research paper can be found there:
Bakaniednė, Indrė; Dominiak-Swigon, Martyna; Meneses da Silva Santos, Miguel Augusto; Pantazatos, Dimitris; Grammatikou, Mary; Montanari, Marco; Virgili, Irene; Galeoto, Giovanni; Flocco, Paolo; Bernabei, Laura; Prasauskienė, Audronė. Challenges of online learning for children with special educational needs and disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review // Journal of intellectual & developmental disability. Oxon: Taylor & Francis. ISSN 1366-8250, 2022, vol. 00, no. 00, p. 00-00. doi:10.3109/13668250.2022.2096956. <https://doi.org/10.3109/13668250.2022.2096956>
- Guidelines for implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
The Guidelines for implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) practices in the inclusive virtual classroom have been published!
The guidelines, the third output of the Project SUCCESS, have been constructed upon the results and reports of other outputs of the project, systematizing and structuring a vast amount of information and resources. This output provides orientation and examples of “good practices” to guide teachers, parents and therapists in the development of educational resources, accessible and academically relevant for all students, thus promoting educational inclusion of students with disabilities in virtual environments.
The guidelines follow the principles of Universal Design for Learning and address issues as:
- The implementation of UDL principles in inclusive virtual classroom, including orientations to plan online lessons for heterogeneous groups of students;
- The provision of additional and intensive support in online environments, including strategies to strengthen the collaboration with parents and other caregivers.
These guidelines will serve as the basis for the construction of the exemplifying course and the MOOC, next outputs of the project.
The guidelines (in English) can be found here:
- Implementation of the Learning Platform
As a part of our “SUCCESS” project, we implemented an experimental e-learning platform for students with different disabilities. The platform enables teachers to create courses for students and also to enroll in already existing educational courses, like the course on creating accessible and inclusive content. Apart from the platform, we work on a set of free distant learning tools, like a cloud drive for file sharing or a video conferencing tool.
For the moment, we introduce accessibility improvements based on the guidelines created by our team at an earlier stage of work to showcase how learning tools could be designed to reflect various user needs.
First tests performed by people with disabilities have shown that the platform fulfills its task and can be successfully used for students with different disabilities.
Feel free to contact us for more information at:
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