Towards the improvement of the cognitive, motoric and academic skills of students with special educational needs using Kinect learning games

There is an ongoing interest in developing motion Kinect-based learning games that are in accordance with intervention protocols for helping children with special educational needs. These games, which offer natural user interaction modalities, seem to be very beneficial for this population because of the combination of physical activities with cognitive-training tasks. There is still an open research issue about how to integrate such games into schools and how to organize systematic evaluation studies for showing their added value. This paper presents the positive findings of a pilot research study in inclusive classroom settings that were carried out at two primary schools with 20 children who have special educational needs and who used the Kinems suite that contains movement-based educational games for such children. Analysis of data gathered via pre- and post-test questionnaires, interviews and an in-depth study of kinetic and learning analytics showed that these games have a positive impact on children's academic performance and improvement of their cognitive, motor and academic skills.