CYCU Combine IT Technology and Profession in Special Education to Open Another Window for Children with Special Needs

[Great News Reporter Lo Wei-Chou/News of Taoyuan]

“Integrate Technology Into Life, Inspire Technology With Life!” In order to combine the professional studies in university and care for the society, CYCU Department of Electronic Engineering and Department of Special Education entered into the interdisciplinary cooperation to integrate the dull electronic system design into the kinect-based rehabilitation and special education games and work hard on the issue about care of people with cognitive impairments, developmentally-delayed children and autistic children, integrate technology into the disadvantaged group’s life, and provide the disadvantaged group with a different vision and future.

CYCU Department of Electronic Engineering and Department of Special Education have worked with each other on the interdisciplinary research on service technology for the physically and mentally disabled for more than 7 years, and developed different game systems to help students with special needs perform various rehabilitation and exercise activities. Teacher Kang Ya-Shu of Department of Special Education indicated that CYCU worked with the special education classes of elementary schools in Zhongli and had the teachers and students of Department of Electronic Engineering utilize the Kinect technology developed by Microsoft to design the “Kinect-based games”, and then had the Department of Special Education provide professional suggestions and practicing classes to design interesting training games for developmentally-delayed children. The successful interdisciplinary integration of electronic engineering and special education allowed the graduate and undergraduate students to verify the needs of the physically and mentally disabled personally, so that these students may learn to care the society in the process of pursuing professional knowledge!

CYCU is used to encouraging teachers and students to benefit people with their knowledge. Chair Chang Yao-Jen of Department of Electronic Engineering, who has started the used computer recovery plan since 2006, indicated that based on the philosophy about holistic education, the departments majored in science and humanities & education contributed to more possibilities between the technological development and humanistic care through the interdisciplinary cooperation across departments. In the recent years, Taiwan’s IT education has started to value the topic about “bridging the digital gap of students with special needs”. Therefore, these brave teachers and students who keep devoting themselves to the Service-Learning for the physically and mentally disabled receive more encouragement and recognition.

Dean of College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Miao Shaou-Kang, also mentioned that the students majored in engineering science primarily focused on research and, therefore, seldom touched the area of service or people. Notwithstanding, CYCU encouraged students to “make the technology friendlier with service”, and CYCU’s educational philosophy has won multiple awards and honors domestically and overseas. For example, the kinect-based rehabilitation and special education games developed by Department of Electronic Engineering and Department of Special Education received the special honor from the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education in June this year, and the following agility training games developed by them won the Best Paper Award of TANET, Ministry of Education in 2017. All of these reflected CYCU’s interdisciplinary Service-Learning results!

Lu Shao-Ting, who graduated from CYCU Department of Electronic Engineering this year, revealed that in the process of participating in the interdisciplinary special research, he had to spent time in dealing with the children with special needs and verifying their behaviors and needs each week, and needed to spent three months in testing and adjusting games after he designed the same. Though it was a tough work, he said that he received precious experience therefor. “We designed the kinect-based games similar “Parkour” in scenario and process to stimulate children’s actual response and then combined the animation games to attract the children to achieve the agility training effects.”, said Lu Shao-Ting.

Chair Chang Yao-Jen also mentioned that Department of Electronic Engineering have organized the “physically and mentally disabled Service-Learning” courses to teach students how to provide the disadvantaged group with professional services by combining the physically and mentally disabled technology and knowledge. The students needed to visit the welfare organizations for the physically and mentally disabled, schools of special education, and hospitals’ psychiatric wards frequently when taking the courses. The experience shared by a lot of students who took the courses for one semester made him moved very much. Some students said “I finally realize what the people with cognitive impairments really need is just companionship and support”, or “I am not afraid of the hospitals’ psychiatric wards any longer”. Some students even felt that “this course makes me most impressive for the past four years before my graduation”.

(Photo provided by CYCU/In order to combine the professional studies in university and care for the society, CYCU Department of Electronic Engineering and Department of Special Education entered into the interdisciplinary cooperation to integrate the dull electronic system design into the kinect-based rehabilitation and special education games, integrate technology into the disadvantaged group’s life, and provide the disadvantaged group with a different vision and future.)