Board Game for Children with Special Needs to Improving Student Interactions

Abstract

Children with special needs, especially children with mental and intellectual disabilities, have limitations in various ways including social interaction and communication. Especially in classes that have various kinds of children with different disorders, it makes children only focus on their own world. Therefore, alternative learning media is needed to help children focus on learning and engaging with their teachers and classmates. This study aims to elaborate the prompts in the board games to improve student’s interactions. This research using ADDIE method (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) to design and develop the board game. This study held in Rumah Autis Bandung, West Java, Indonesia with 8 students aged 8 – 12 years old as respondents. Research using live size board game with 15 prompts and with other various daily objects. The content used is simple instructions regarding daily activities in the form of prompts for interaction, communication and prompts for practicing daily activities. Research analysis descibe in qualitative data that gained using interview and observation sheets by researcher and teacher. Based on the research findings, this study can be concluded that the use of board games in teaching classes was able to enhance student’s interactions. It helped students to communicated with their classmate. From this research we can also conclude that boardgame media can be an activity option for children with special needs in improving various skills. Use of board games also facilitated students to practice their motor skill for daily activities in various topics. In the future research, the design board game could be personalized according children’s disabilities and needs so it could be more effective for children’s learning.
Keywords: Board game, Children with Special Need, Student interactions