Track: Human Factors and Ergonomics

Abstract

In the Philippines, the population of autism is vastly growing; males are most likely to be diagnosed with autism compared to females. Special Education (SPED) teachers experience difficulties in teaching autism diagnosed students due to their uncontrollable physical behaviors which is a major challenge for SPED teachers nowadays. Further assessment shows that ninety-percent (90%) of Filipino autism diagnosed students are using gadgets mostly and behaves through it. With an aim to help SPED teachers, researchers identified the factors significant to enhance the current learning system. To measure the learnability, learning preference checklist was deployed. After a keen assessment, autism diagnosed students were most likely to learn through visuals and video models. Through normality testing, data gathered implies a normal distribution with a p-value of 0.190. With correlation, the positive strong side are Adaptability (0.638), Illumination (0.753) and Phonics (0.679). With the aid of structural equation modelling (SEM), it resulted in the following estimates of significant factors: Adaptability (0.28), Sounds (0.32) and Videos and Films (0.14) preference. Recommendation presented in this research is an ergonomic design system which has an intention to promote life skills among autism students by eliminating uncontrollable behaviors thus making communication and learning process easier.