Case Study of ASCIT: Fostering Communication through Interactive Technologies for Long Term Sick Children - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 210

Table 3. Demographic characteristics of the participating children, their teachers and their classmates

Child 1 Child 2 Child 3 Child 4 Child 5 Child 6

Child characteristics
♂♀ ♀ ♂ ♂ ♀ ♂ ♂

Age 9 yrs 13 yrs 15 yrs 12 yrs 10 yrs 10 yrs

Illness Chronic

Skin Dis-
ease

Chronic Meta-
bolic Disease

Traumatic Brain
Injury

Hip Fracture Leukaemia Leukaemia

Residence at the time of
the study

Home Home Rehabilitation Centre Home Home Home

Ability to attend school Yes, but less
than 50%

Yes, but less
than 50%

No Yes, but less

than 25%

No No

Teacher characteristics
♂♀

♀ ♀ (4) ♀ (2) ♂ (1) ♀ ♀ ♀ (2)

Classroom character-
istics
Amount of children > 25 chil-

dren

> 20 children > 20 children > 25 chil-

dren

> 20 children > 20 children

at the beginning and the end of the trial
period

meaning were coded by those two researchers.
The average percent agreement between the codes
assigned to the units of meaning was: 0.78.
To answer the first research question, a meth-
odology similar to Nuthall's methodology as de-
scribed in Collins & O'Toole (2006) was adopted.
The video data were divided in sequences of 15
seconds. Each sequence was assigned at least
one code. The coding scheme originated from
the data by comparing the categories found by
two independent researchers and was completed
with the codes used by Collins & O'Toole (2006).
Furthermore, the data from the stimulated recall
interviews with children were transcribed and
entered in the SPSS-file as well to link emotions
reported by the children during specific time
intervals to certain activities observed during
these sequences.

• A weekly follow-up interview by phone

with the parents and the child (if possible)

• A diary kept by the teachers

• At least one, but most of the time two ob-

servations at the child's end of the tool and
at the classroom end of the tool

• A stimulated recall interview of the child

The data from interviews, the teachers' dia-
ries and the observations were used to answer
the research questions. The data were coded by
two independent coders into categories derived
from the conceptual framework developed for
the Second Information Technology in Education
Study 2-study (Kozma, 2003). This model sum-
marizes the factors that may influence the use of
technology in the classroom and its impact on
educational outcomes. However, the model was
refined with categories typically for the context
of children with a chronic or long-term illness,
which were deduced from the data using the
constant comparative method by two independent
researchers. Thirty-three percent of the units of

Results

In this section we elaborate on the result of the
field trials, separated into an evaluation of the
prototype and recommendations for the employed
hardware.