TRAINING BASIC SKILLS OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES BY USING E-LEARNING Ileana Hamburg IAT, Germany Adina Ionescu & Gheorghe Ivan “Octav Onicescu”, Bucharest, Romania

The needs of the people with disability People with disabilities are much more liable than their peers without disabilities to be unqualified or unemployed; Some adults have their basic skills deteriorated due to an illness or an accident and presently they are unable to learn in the same environments and with the same efficiency as they used to do. Persons with learning difficulties such as those caused by poor short-term memory require qualified trainers; Some disabled learners requires assistive technology such as tape recorders, Braille, voice synthesisers; Other disabled learners require transportation to the place of learning, a time table which avoid fatigue, or even a personal assistant.

E-learning E-learning offers many advantages over the traditional training, providing flexibility in terms of learning conditions (e.g. time and place), adaptation of the learning material and of the learning content to the learners needs. There are also some disadvantages like the costs of the assistive technologies necessary for the disabled people, which can be very expensive.

The needs of the people with disability Many disabled learners needs permanent learning opportunities. This could be realised by combination of formal and informal training methods. Learners with disabilities need to assimilate basic skills in order to become an active member of the society. Disabled learners needs to build new skills required by new economical and technical changes (for example they need to learn how to use information technology, Braille, Sign Language).

The barriers to learning process The curriculum for basic skills is insufficient flexible to enable all disabled learners to build new skills which are required with many economical and technical changes; There is a lack of qualified teachers, specialized in teaching to the people with learning difficulties; Many trainers are unfamiliar with the range of software available for the disabled learners. Many disabled learners obtain low performances in the learning process and many teachers do not know how to proceed with them. Many disabled learners have a lack of confidence and are unable to retain basic skills because of their cognitive or physical impairments.

Removing the barriers in the training process It is necessary for all disabled learners to have an individual learning plan; Many disabled learners needs learning materials in a variety of formats such as CD-s, audio, Braille and need assistive technologies to access and use these materials. It is important that at local, national and European level are developed projects on adult basic skills, taking into consideration learning difficulties of the people with disabilities. The basic skills for the people with learning disabilities must be essential skills for every day living, learning to learn, communication skills including IT skills, creative skills to promote self expression and confidence building It is important to involve each disabled student to decide which skills wants to develop and to have an individualized learning plan built on previous learning experiences.

Examples of some European projects SOCRATES GRUNDTVIG 1 project: “The Basic Skills Training Model”, BASKI Some outputs of the project: A written curriculum to facilitate the acquisition of basic skills for disabled people; A written curriculum to train professionals in psychological counselling to guide and support the Basic Skills Training groups

Improvement of Employment Chances of the Unemployed and the Visual and Auditive Disabled By Using Virtual Learning Applications -IECUVADVLA-

Partners “Octav Onicescu” High School (Bucharest, Romania) The Romanian Foundation for Quality Promotion (RFQP, Bucharest, Romania) Institut Arbeit und Technik (Gelsenkirchen, Germany) Széchenyi István University (Gyor, Hungary) Fry-Samuels & Associates Company (Lymington, U.K) I.E.R.-Stichting International Excellence Reserve (Eindhoven, the Netherlands)

The target group Senior unemployed; (Senior) unemployed with visual and hearing impairments.

Objectives Improvement of the employment chances of the target group; National studies on unemployment situation and of the visual and auditive disabled; Comparative analysis on the base of the national studies; Short national studies about the specific needs of the target group and the educational assistance by electronic means; Questionnaires to identify the level of knowledge of the target group and their possibilities of employment; Training courses on basic computer skills and employment techniques;

Objectives Design and development of the training modules in different forms accessible for the target group (available on web, CD-s, in print form, in text speech conversion, Braille); Development of the project’s web site; Full practical testing of the training modules on learners; Dissemination of the project results; Evaluation of the project results.

Project’s activities Collecting data and information and developing national studies on the situation of the unemployed and the visual/auditive disabled; Collecting data and information and developing short national studies about the specific needs of the target groups and of the educational assistance by electronic means; Disscusions and contacts established with National Agency for Work Force Occupation, with local Agency for Work Force Occupation, with the Town Hall, and with representatives of the target group.

Project’s activities Writing a matrix comparative report on the base of the national studies; Elaboration of the questionnaires for evaluation of the target group needs, their level of knowledge and employment opportunities; Design and development of the project’s web sites. Updating information about the project’s progress and results; Design and development of the training modules in different forms accessible for the target group; evaluation of the project’s results (internal evaluation and the feedback from the adult learners);

Project’s activities Dissemination activities :  Within the training workshops;  On the project’s web site;  During the meetings with representatives of National Agency for Work Force Occupation and local Agencies for Work Force Occupation;  By publication and participation to the international conference;  By posters, folders and panels.

The end products after the 1-st year national studies on unemployment situation of the visual and auditive (unemployed) disabled; short national studies about the specific needs of the target group and the educational assistance by electronic means; comparative report on the base of the short national studies; questionnaires to identify the level of knowledge of the target group and their possibilities of employment; quality charter; web sites of the project;

The end products after the 1 st year CD-s with project’s activities and project’s results; Training modules using virtual Application Models on basic computer skills and employment techniques (available on web, CD-s, in print forms); Panels, posters and folders; The paper entitled “Improving the quality of life and work of elderly and disabled people by using distance learning and virtual applications”, authors: Ileana Hamburg, Herbert ten Thij, Adina Ionescu was presented to the 11-th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (July, 2005, Las Vegas, U.S.A).

Conclusions ♦ The project IECUVADVLA drew attention to the issue of the senior unemployed and disabled persons. ♦ The project stimulates the change of employers’ attitude towards the value of employing (senior) unemployed and disabled persons. ♦ The adult learners actively participated to the project meetings and workshops. ♦ The institutions participating in the Learning Partnership, as a whole, found new possibilities and experiences in cooperation on an European scale. ♦ The project introduced the use of Information Technology in the process of teaching and learning to (senior) unemployed and (unemployed) persons with hearing and visual impairments.

Mirror sites addresses Romania - Octav Onicescu High School ♦ Romania - Romanian Foundation for Quality Promotion ♦ Germany - Institut Arbeit und Technik ♦ Hungary - Széchenyi István University ♦ The Netherlands I.E.R.- Stichting International Excellence Reserve ♦ United Kingdom -Fry-Samuels & Associates (Lymington) Limited