The Impact of a Computing Curriculum Accessible to Students with ASD on the Development of Computing Artifacts

Abstract

There has been no study examining the effectiveness of an accessible computing curriculum for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on their learning of computational thinking concepts (CTCs), flow control, data representation, abstraction, user interactivity, synchronization, parallelism, and logic. This study aims to investigate the effects of an accessible computing curriculum for students with ASD on their learning of CTCs as measured by the scores of 312 computing artifacts developed by two groups of students with ASD. Conducted among 21 seventh-grade students with ASD (10 in the experimental group and 11 in the control), this study involved collecting data on the computing projects of these students over 24 instructional sessions. Group classification was considered the independent variable, and computing project scores were set as the dependent variables. The results showed that the original curriculum was statistically significantly more effective for students in learning logic than the accessible one when all seven CTCs were examined as a single construct. Both curriculums were statistically significantly effective in progressively improving students’ learning of data representation, abstraction, synchronization, parallelism, and all CTCs as a single construct when examining the gradual increase in their computing artifact scores over the 24 sessions. Both curriculums were statistically significantly effective in increasing the scores of synchronization and all CTCs as a single construct when the correlations between CTCs and sessions for individual groups were analyzed. The findings underscore that students with ASD can effectively learn computing skills through accessible or standard curriculums, provided that adjustments are made during delivery.