Number Skills Mobile Application for Down Syndrome Children

Studies found that learning number skills seems to be more difficult for Down Syndrome
(DS) children compared to reading skills. They need personalized learning in numbers
due to their slower pace of learning. Unfortunately, there is limited theory to guide DS
children to learn and master in mathematics. Besides that, with the advancement of
technology, the learning style of special children has been improved from time to time
from the paper and pen method, to the use of computer application such as courseware,
and the latest technology is mobile application in smart phones and tablets. But, as for
now, there is no personalized mathematics learning mobile application for DS children.
To address this problem, the aim of this project is to develop a mobile application on
learning the basic numbers for Down Syndrome children, with the objective of
identifying the suitable learning theory to be used in developing numeracy conceptual
framework for them. The other objective is to evaluate the user acceptance on the
developed mobile application at the last phase of the project development. The study
will be focusing on the Down Syndrome children with moderate level of IQ who are
learning to recognize basic numbers. In this project, the method used to achieve the
objectives is Rapid Application Development (RAD). The phase of requirement
planning was done through interview, research and literature review study on gathering
information about Down Syndrome, learning theories and the suitable development
platform for the application. For user design phase, the suitable learning theory has been
designed, the draft as well as the flow of suitable user-interface has been created. The
construction part involved activities of developing and validating the mobile application,
and user acceptance test. Lastly, after conducted a user testing to DS children who have
different level of IQ, the result shows that the mobile application is really suitable for
DS children who have moderate level IQ as stated in the scope before. This is because it
is able to assist them in understanding basic numbers through the process of learning
mathematics based on the learning theory included in the application learning style.