Guidelines to assist building effective educational applications and e-games for children with ADHD.

Many researchers and psychology specialists aim to develop educational applications and e-games, which target cognitive abilities, behavioural and social skills for children with Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These applications apply certain learning strategies that might improve certain abilities and skills. They could be found easily in online stores, yet hard to judge the efficiency and desirability of each one unless they are evaluated and tested. For this reason, there was a need for the existence of a list of guidelines that could be used to assist building learning systems with effective e-strategies for children with ADHD. The main objective of this work was to form a foundation that guide software developers in implementing effective educational applications to develop these children’s abilities and skills. In addition, it may help educators and parents to distinguish between available applications. As our first stage of investigation, a meta-analytical review of multiple empirical studies was conducted, that outlined the effective game features on the development of abilities and skills for children with ADHD. Five units of analysis were done separately, targeting: attention, working memory, processing speed, behaviour, and social skills. The most significant and effective methods/features from the included studies were highlighted and used to draw out our list of guidelines. As the second stage, we investigated an existing e-game with certain game features to check if our guidelines apply, and evaluated its effectiveness toward improving cognition, behaviour and social skills. Seventeen female students with ADHD, from two primary schools in Saudi Arabia, participated in the evaluation. they played with the game three sessions a week, for four months. Significant improvements found on their cognition, behaviour, social skills and academic performance. As for our intervention, we validated ‘e-socialization’ component; by developing and evaluating a social online tool for children with ADHD. Seven Saudi students with ADHD, aged between 6 and 8 years, participated in the evaluation. The intervention involved playing ACTIVATE mini games, and a chatting session after each game. Children showed fairly significant improvements in games scores. The online socialization tool, found to be positively influencing children’s knowledge and experience exchange, motivation, and social skills. As a conclusion, we could say that our produced list of guidelines might assist in building effective applications and games for children with ADHD. Therefore, aiding the process of improving their academic achievements, improving their cognition and behaviour, and supporting socialisation

Effects of E-Games on the Development of Saudi Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Cognitively, Behaviourally and Socially: An Experimental Study

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a set of behavioural characteristics disorder, such as inattentiveness, hyperactivity and/or impulsiveness. It can affect people with different intelligent abilities, and it may affect their academic performance, social skills and generally, their lives. Usually, symptoms are not clearly recognized until the child enters school, most cases are identified between the ages 6 to 12. In the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), ADHD is a widely spread disorder among young children. Usually, they suffer from distraction and lack of focus, and hyperactivity, which reduce their academic achievements. As technology have been used in classrooms to facilitate the information delivery for students, and to make learning fun; some of these technologies have actually been applied in many schools in KSA with normal students, but unfortunately no studies were reported by the time of writing this paper. Specifically, there are no studies done for using any type of technology to help Saudi students with ADHD reaching up their peers academically. Because of that, our focus in this study is to investigate the effect of using technology, particularly e-games, to improve Saudi children with ADHD cognitively, behaviourally and socially. As well as evaluating the interaction between those children with the game interface. Thus, the investigation done through exploring the interaction of web-based games that runs on Tablets. The respondents are 17 ADHD children aged from 6–12 in classroom settings. The study involves focussing on interface of the games stimulate different executive functions in the brain, which is responsible for the most important cognitive capacities, such as: Sustained Attention, Working Memory, and Speed of Processing. Ethnographic method of research was used, which involved observing students’ behaviour in classroom, to gather information and feedback about their interaction with the application. National Institutes of Health (NIH) tests were used in pre- and post- intervention to measure improvements in attention, processing speed and working memory. Students’ test scores of main school subjects were taken pre- and post-intervention to measure enhancement in academic performance. Results show that using the application significantly improve cognitive capacities for participants, which affected their academic grades in Math, English and Science, as well as its positive influence on their behaviour. In addition, the application’s interface was found easy to use and subjectively pleasing. As a conclusion, the application considered effective and usable

Effects of E-Games on the Development of Saudi Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Cognitively, Behaviourally and Socially: An Experimental Study

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a set of behavioural characteristics disorder, such as inattentiveness, hyperactivity and/or impulsiveness. It can affect people with different intelligent abilities, and it may affect their academic performance, social skills and generally, their lives. Usually, symptoms are not clearly recognized until the child enters school, most cases are identified between the ages 6 to 12. In the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), ADHD is a widely spread disorder among young children. Usually, they suffer from distraction and lack of focus, and hyperactivity, which reduce their academic achievements. As technology have been used in classrooms to facilitate the information delivery for students, and to make learning fun; some of these technologies have actually been applied in many schools in KSA with normal students, but unfortunately no studies were reported by the time of writing this paper. Specifically, there are no studies done for using any type of technology to help Saudi students with ADHD reaching up their peers academically. Because of that, our focus in this study is to investigate the effect of using technology, particularly e-games, to improve Saudi children with ADHD cognitively, behaviourally and socially. As well as evaluating the interaction between those children with the game interface. Thus, the investigation done through exploring the interaction of web-based games that runs on Tablets. The respondents are 17 ADHD children aged from 6–12 in classroom settings. The study involves focussing on interface of the games stimulate different executive functions in the brain, which is responsible for the most important cognitive capacities, such as: Sustained Attention, Working Memory, and Speed of Processing. Ethnographic method of research was used, which involved observing students’ behaviour in classroom, to gather information and feedback about their interaction with the application. National Institutes of Health (NIH) tests were used in pre- and post- intervention to measure improvements in attention, processing speed and working memory. Students’ test scores of main school subjects were taken pre- and post-intervention to measure enhancement in academic performance. Results show that using the application significantly improve cognitive capacities for participants, which affected their academic grades in Math, English and Science, as well as its positive influence on their behaviour. In addition, the application’s interface was found easy to use and subjectively pleasing. As a conclusion, the application considered effective and usable