MIS 321 Phase Report
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Systems Request Summary
Preliminary Investigation Findings
Survey
Recommendations
Cost Estimates
Expected Benefits
Appendix – 1 Cost Estimation
Glossary
Useful Links
Developmental Individual-difference Relationship-Based Model/Floortime
Loovas Model
Early Start Denver Model
Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT)
Verbal Behavior Therapy
The list of Autism Foundations in Turkey
The Available Programs
Ece-Mer Rehabilitation Center
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
Autism and Autism in Turkey
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and autism are the terms used to identify complex disorders of brain development; these disorders vary for each individual in degrees, and by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors. Until May 2013, ASD was diagnosed as its distinct subtypes such as autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder (PDS) and Asperger Syndrome(Centers For Disease Control and Prevention).
The common signs and symptoms of these disorders can be identified in early age, between 2 and 3 years old. In some cases establishing the diagnosis is possible in 18 months of age and there are reported cases of parents showing concern about developmental problems from 6 months of age. Research shows that autism is the fastest-growing serious developmental disorder in the U.S. as 1 of every 68 children is considered to be on the autism spectrum. It is also stated that other studies showed an average prevalence of about 1 in 100 in Asia, Europe and North America(Centers For Disease Control and Prevention). These facts also showed that even though not proven by scientific research, the number estimate for ASD in Turkey is also supposed to be very high.
There is no medical cure for autism although early diagnosis and intervention with therapies can improve outcomes. In Turkey, the Ministry of National Education gives funding to monthly 8 45-minutes individual and if needed 4 45-minutes group therapy sessions conducted by special education teachers for children aged between 3 and 16 diagnosed with ASD. However, it is necessary to have longer durationaltherapy. Popular therapies suggest a minimum of 20-25 hours a week (80-100 hours a month) and up to 40 hours a week, conductedby therapists and sometimessupported by parents.
The survey results and internet research show that for every individual a tailored intervention plan is necessary and the basics of these plans are mostly based on the Loovas Model, which is based on ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) and the Early Start Denver Model. This model treats ASD as a behavioral disease and aims on correcting the behaviors of the individual. There are also different derivations of ABA which are commonly used such as Pivotal Response Therapy (PRT) and Verbal Behavior Therapy and different approaches as Floortimewhich is derived from Developmental Individual-difference Relationship-Based Model (Autism Speaks).
In Turkey, there is a need for both spreading awareness about ASD and facilities offering therapy sessions for diagnosed individuals –mainly children. It can be observed that there are a few foundations and organizations in Turkey and the most well-known being TOHUM Türkiye Otizm Erken Tanı ve Eğitim Vakfı. This organization also uses the ABA method aforementioned.
First findings showed that even though ABA methods are showing improvement in individuals’ conditions and some of the daily life skills are mastered, parents often feel as if their children’s behaviors became more robot-like. This can be explained as ABA, treating ASD as a behavioral disease, applies a repetitive therapy to prompt the individual to perform a behavior, until he/she masters it (Autism Treatment Center of America).
Regardless of the method selected for therapy, the need of keeping track of the individual progress is crystal clear. There are two mainly used programs designed for rehabilitation centers in Turkey; namely Lila and EÇOP (Engelli Çocuklar Otomasyon Programı). These two programs help the facilities to create programs for each individual, keeping track of their progress and are connected with the Ministry of National Education’s Mebbis program. These programs are designed not only for ASD diagnosed individuals but for individuals with special needs and also the parents are not included.
Ece-Mer Rehabilitation Center
Ece-Mer Rehabilitation Center is a special education and rehabilitation center in Bursa. It was founded in 2002 and has been operating ever since. The center offers therapy sessions for children with special needs, ASD being only one of them. Having the experience in the special education sector for more than 10 years, they are now thinking of establishing a new educational institution solely for children diagnosed with ASD.
With our project we are aiming to create a system specially designed for the educational institution for the treatment of ASD. The system will allow the teachers and also parents to track their child’s improvement and will encourage parent involvement in their child’s therapy. The system will include all the necessary parts from the existing systems and will have more sophisticated analyzing-tracking system.
While creating the system, all team members will be involved in all the designing process, but their main focuses will be different. Eda Telli and İrem Belkıs Topçu will be focusing on research & analysis and Numan Soysal and Sefa Duran will be focusing on systems planning & troubleshooting, design will be done by all the team members.
Systems Request Summary
Aim of this new system is the parent integration and optimization of every process via usage of web-based systems.
The system requirements include; personalized weekly schedule creation for every child/student enrolled in the system, the corresponding weekly schedule for their teachers, creating forms to record all the sessions children/students take, keeping track of the child/student’s progress, showing this process in an understandable way, creating daily service routes according to the created schedules of all the children’s, storing all the records of the children/students and their families, changing the records/some information if necessary, storing necessary information of the teachers and updating if necessary, ability to make last minute changes on the teachers’ schedules (especially in the case of last minute absence), ability to send messages to the users (i.e. parent-teacher communication or sending assignments to parents), creating new student/teacher accounts, deleting student/teacher accounts if necessary. If necessary our team will add, subtract or change some of the requirements.
Preliminary Investigation Findings
As mentioned in the introduction, we found that there are two main programs used in rehabilitation centers for children with special needs, namely Lila and EÇOP. These programs have database connections and connections to the Ministry of Education’s program Mebbis but they are not integrated to the centers’ websites and allow parent access.
IntervIew purpose:
An interview was conducted to reach further understanding of the current systemEce-Mer Rehabilitation Center was using and what were their expectations for the new system thus developing the system to answer customer expectations better.
Interviewee information:
A representative from Ece-Mer Rehabilitation Center was interviewed.
Questions asked:
- Why are you thinking about opening a new school?
- What will be the main difference between this school and the existing ones?
- What is the one thing that you feel hardest to do currently?
- What do you expect from this new system?
Interview results:
The interview showed us that the need for special therapy is increasing at an increasing rate and the current facilities of the center can’t respond to this demand well and this is the main reason why they are planning to open a new educational institution solely for the treatment of autistic children.
We reached the conclusion that there is a need to combine both experts’ and families’ efforts together to reach the optimal hours of training as they believe by expanding the required therapy hours by adding sports, music and art lessons, social and daily activities, they can understand and reach the patients better which leads to a more efficient therapy. They also believe the parent’s should be guided and taught and sometimes instructed as they believe the main difference between their new establishment and the existing ones will be the role of parents during the therapy process, which is just observing in the existing ones.
They reported that the most problematic process of their daily planning is the service scheduling as all of the children are there for one session time and the number of the rooms and teachers don’t allow every one of them coming at the same time and they cannot make children wait at the center for long hours. They added that the center has 4 service buses to cope with the situation. However, this is neither sufficient nor profitable as they explained further.
In addition to parent integration, they expect sophisticated analyzing/tracking system both for the progress of their students and for the planning of service routes and also they want all of the necessary processes of the existing programs (improved and tailored for them if possible), such as schedule planning.
Survey
A survey was created to understand the educators’ interest level and their thoughts about autism. You can reach the survey from this link.
Methodology: Study setting used for the distribution of the survey was non-contrived as the survey was prepared as an online survey. The unit of analysis is individuals and this survey is cross-sectional.
Sampling: Convenience sampling- teachers from Ece-Mer Rehabilitation Center were asked to fill out the survey (due to limited time and limited connections to the special education teachers’ population).
Results:
The participation level is rather low with only 8 respondents out of 16.
All of the respondents were women so it can be concluded that women have a higher tendency to become special education teachers. Ages of the teachers vary between 23 and 30, which mean that teachers working with children with special needs are rather young and unmarried with a percentage of 70%. However, most of them think even when they have their own child; it wouldn’t have an effect on their jobs.
Teachers will need more training and education as their experience is generally limited with almost 80% having an experience of 0-2 years. However, they also answered that they are reading and researching about autism from the Internet and also from some seminars and scientific research papers.
We clearly understood that loving your job is a basic requirement for being a special education teacher as every single person stated that they love their jobs. Nearly 50% of teachers concluded that their daily emotions can affect their lectures.
The respondents stated that none of them took any psychological support after they started to teach autistic children. However, they all believe that after working with autistic children, they changed emotionally. Even though it doesn’t have any direct connection with the system we are aiming to design this topic can be researched further.
Majority of the teachers think that in order to observe improvement in children’s conditions, one on one lessons should be conducted every day of the week. They also state that they are most productive if the working hours are between 7-8 hours.
Unfortunately, teachers don’t think that the parents are aware of autism, that’s why, it is necessary to educate the parents about this process too.
Teachers think that the children are more open to learning on one on one sessions with them. This result can be interpreted in two different ways; one is, as they are teachers, it is quite natural to think that the most progress is while they are with the children, and the other one is that as there are no other available options (they didn’t experience parent-child one on one or child with parent sessions) they think is possible.
All of the teachers reported that they are preparing special education programs for each child and while preparing these programs they are especially paying attention to their ages and their development levels. They are also taking notice of their environment, performance, skills and real performance.
Regarding the communication between autistic children, there is divided opinion between the teachers; some of them think their communication is better that their communication with grown-ups, some of them think they are not communicating effectively.
They think, if the child’s autism spectrum is low (is less affected by autism) inclusive education is a must.
Recommendations
As a system for an educational institution for the treatment of autistic children is nonexistent, we can’t give any recommendations without further investigation.
Cost Estimates
Cost estimates of the project were calculated to be 11.398USD. Details can be found in Appendix - 1.
Expected Benefits
With this new institution, as the amount spent in the institution and the number of therapy sessions increase, an increase in revenue is expected. In addition by the optimization of the service system the cost of transportation will decrease. Also by increasing the conversation rate with the parents and by allowing them to track their child’s progress, the customer satisfaction is expected to increase.
Appendix– 1 Cost Estimation
Item # / Description / Quantity / Unit Cost / Total Cost1 / Project Labor Cost for 4 employees for 4 months (October 2014-January 2015) / 4 / $ 2.000 / $ 8.000
2 / Laptop Cost for office (MacBook Air’13) / 2 / $ 1.000 / $ 2.000
3 / VINN Internet Modem Cost for 4 months(with distributor equipment) / 1 / $ 300 / $ 300
4 / Estimated BUDO transportation fee
(İstanbul-to-Bursa) / 16 / $ 15 / $ 240
5 / Car Rental Fee in Bursa / 4 / $ 40 / $ 160
6 / Estimated Total Telephone Bill / 1 / $ 50 / $ 50
7 / Web Hosting Cost (per month) / 36 months / $ 18 / $ 648
Total: / $ 11.398
Glossary
Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA):Applied Behavior Analysis is the process of systematically applying interventions based upon the principles of learning theory to improve socially significant behaviors to a meaningful degree,and to demonstrate that the interventions employed are responsible for the improvement in behavior (Applied Behavioral Strategies).
Asperger Syndrome:a developmental disorder.It is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), one of a distinct group of neurological conditions characterized by a greater or lesser degree of impairment in language and communication skills, as well as repetitive or restrictive patterns of thought and behavior (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke).
Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDS):the disorders characterized by delays in the development of socialization and communication skills (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke).
Prevalence:The proportion of individuals in a population having a disease or characteristic.
Useful Links
Developmental Individual-difference Relationship-Based Model/Floortime
Loovas Model
Early Start Denver Model
Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT)
Verbal Behavior Therapy
The list of Autism Foundations in Turkey
The Available Programs
Lila:
EÇOP:
Ece-Mer Rehabilitation Center
Bibliography
Applied Behavioral Strategies. (n.d.). What is ABA. Retrieved November 1, 2014, from Applied Behavioral Strategies:
Autism Speaks. (n.d.). How is Autism Treated? Retrieved October 28, 2014, from Autism Speaks, Inc. Web Site:
Autism Treatment Center of America. (n.d.). ABA vs. The Son Rise Program. Retrieved October 28, 2014, from The Son Rise Program:
Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Data & Statistics. Retrieved October 28, 2014, from Centers For Disease Control and Prevention Web Site:
Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Diagnostic Criteria. Retrieved October 28, 2014, from Centers For Disease Control and Prevention Web Site:
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. (tarih yok). NINDS Asperger Syndrome Information Page. November 1, 2014 tarihinde National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: adresinden alındı
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. (tarih yok). NINDS Pervasive Developmental Disorders Information Page. November 1, 2014 tarihinde National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: adresinden alındı
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