ELSUPPORT
E-Learning Support For Disabled Students

About Project

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that affects how people respond to their environment behaviorally, socially and communicatively. The prevalence of autism is increasing rapidly today, according to some data from international organisations, every 20 minutes in the world, a child is diagnosed with autism, while one of every 59 children today is born with autism. The recent increased prevalence of autism has, in part, been due to the increased recognition of autism in those with average or higher intellectual ability (Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, 2012) Outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has adversely affected every field of industry, sectors, social and cultural lives. Education is one of the most affected areas in this regard. educational institutions have continued their education processes as much as possible for individuals with normal development in line with their own means and through other web-based applications.

The fact that distance online education is being done more frequently and intensively causes on especially disabled individuals to experience more difficulties in accessing education. However, in this period, applications and digital content that specially developed programs for individuals with special education whose learning outcomes are different from normal individuals, are more observable and necessary much more. Researches show that Online learning affects the whole family, not just the child with autism (Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2019). Parents may be working from home, or they may have less time to handle the chores of the day with children studying from home. Before the project preparation literature view carried out and online tools, web based programs, digital materials and eLearning initiatives monitored. Researches show that Online learning affects the whole family, not just the child with autism (Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2019).

Parents may be working from home, or they may have less time to handle the chores of the day with children studying from home. A family-centered approach can help everyone better manage online learning schedules and expectations. By the project, developed web based platform provides trainings activity tools with their educators and experts permanently. The tools of the Project that will be shared on web based platform, families and teachers will come together more frequently via e-learning environment of the internet and online.

Students with autism mostly needs repetition of the words, shapes, colours, movements, and activities to be learned the concepts and behaviours. The designed applications and digital learning materials on web based platform provides to the students some continuous repetitions besides teaching lessons at their homes and also their education centres. Autism is characterised by social communication difficulties and restricted behaviours and interests which impact to differing degrees on a person’s level of functioning (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Online learning provides flexibility in terms of time and place for learning and allows for asynchronous engagement in discussions with students and teaching staff, potentially reducing stress by providing the student with the opportunity to respond in their own time. When it looked the increase in numbers of students on the autism spectrum enrolling in higher education, research (Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2019) is warranted in identifying factors that create supportive learning environments for students with autism.

Three main objectives foreseen by the project;
- The one is an interactive sharing platform that will be infrastructure online learning and teaching activities which can be conducted by teachers and parents.
- The second is digital contents, tools and e-learning materials for students with autism (ASD).
- The third is teacher training and parents training modules for the elearning platforms to give them support trainings to the students with autism. Guidelines and pilot trainings implementations is the complementary outputs of the project. For those purposes, experienced partners on autism and high capability experts who worked on development of software and web base portals are needed. Digital materials for the autistic students will be developed according to the individual learning plan in the context of attainments of the education programs. Digital materials will consist of repetition exercises, paring the things, finding the differences on shapes, speech tasks, songs, induction of some simple problem solving scenarios …etc. In addition, mobile applications will be studied under the output of digital material development.


Parents and teachers need to be guided and counselling mechanism to cope with the difficulties of the training periods of students with autism. Project will offer a parent guide to usage of the platforms and for each of every digital material. Digital materials and e-learning tools will consist of an introduction phase for parents that ensure for them how to use the platforms, functions of the programs, implementation of the application, playing or stopping e-learning tools …etc.

Teacher must know to use training materials, ICT equipment, and education programs Teacher also have to develop their own training materials corresponding to the curricula. Quality of the digital materials and e-learning contents should be ensured by well qualified teacher have ability on developing educational materials. For the effective use of the E-Platform, teachers who work on the students with autism will have the oppotunity to use, test, and produce e- learning materials and tools.

All project partners are aware of some much developed digital e-learning initiatives in their countries, beside this, some of them are involved in developing of such applications. After the detailed investigations and sharing best practices of the applications, it is planned to draw a road map for developing platform. The platform will be designed for three main active users who are students with autism (ASD), parents of the autistic students, and teachers or experts of autistic students. Digital materials for the autistic students will be developed according to the individual learning plan in the context of attainments of the education programs. Digital materials will consist of repetition exercises, paring the things, finding the differences on shapes, speech tasks, songs, induction of some simple problem solving scenarios …etc.

Preparation of the digital materials and elearning tools will be developed by taking on combining factor of products for student with ASD in different projects and initiatives of various countries. Participation of parents to the training process is the crucial importance for using and developing sharing platforms, especially during covid-19 pandemic. Parents and teachers need to be guided and counselling mechanism to cope with the difficulties of the training periods of student

There are five results and coordinators of the result are defined as follows
Result 1: E-Platform: Web- based sharing platform to conduct training activities with digital materials and e-learning tools.
Result 2: E Learning Tools: Digital materials and e-learnings tools to be developed
Result 3: Parents training program on autism and guidelines for e-Platform
Result 4: Teacher Training program on how to prepare digital materials, e-learning tools,
Result 5: Pilot Reports, pilot training and assessment of the tools in designed web based platform