Fostering parents-professional collaboration for facilitating the school inclusion of students with ASD: design of the " ToGather" web-based prototype

Abstract

In recent years, many psycho-educational technologies were studied to address the school-related difficulties encountered by students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, most of them remain individual-centered and do not consider the social environment. To fill this gap, this study reports on the user-centered design of a web-based support tool, which aims to support communication and coordination between parents, school staff and health professionals of middle and high school students with ASD, in the context of elaborating, implementing, and following an Individualized Education Plan. The study followed a two-step design process: (1) a need analysis for identifying information domains deemed important by the stakeholders; (2) through a participative iterative design process, a panel of professionals and parents provided ideas and feedbacks on the design, which was integrated in subsequent prototype versions of the "ToGather" app.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11423-021-10073-w.

Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder; Ecosystemic approach; Parent-professional relationships; School inclusion; User-centered design.

Fig. 1

Participatory design-based research process of “ToGather” app

Fig. 2

Distribution of the respondents by setting and occupation: family setting (parents), medico-social setting (health practitioners), and school setting (teachers, school aides)

Fig. 3

Recurring themes reported in the open-ended question about the difficulties encountered by the respondents, with the distribution between parents and school professionals

Fig. 4

Recurring themes reported in the open-ended question about the information needs, with the distribution between the three categories of respondents (family, school and health professionals)

Fig. 5

The first mock-up of the “ToGather” app

Fig. 6

The web interface of the designed tool. Left: the page for accessing to students’ records. Right: the first page of the record, with the content of “My Profile” section

Fig. 7

The interface of the “My Skills” section, allowing to consult student’s skill assessment per category. This section proposes both current skill evaluation (left) and a progress graph with actual and past data (right)

Fig. 8

Top-left: the interface of “My Meetings” section, with the history of past meetings and links to download the PDF report. Bottom-left: the header of the meeting creation interface allowing to select the recipients of the report. Right: the interface for (re-)evaluate the student’s skills and manage the list of skills

Fig. 9

Interfaces for the sections “My Compendium of tips” (left) and “My News” (right)

Fig. 10

Left the users list and their respective roles (page available for the administrator). Right the final prototype with the five sections