The purpose of this paper is to update developments to date of the EagleEyes Technology Validation phase #1 from August 1994- through June 1996 and to identify the major goals and activities of A Program Development phase #2 that will begin September 1996.
What is EagleEyes?
EagleEyes is an award winning new technology developed by three Boston College Faculty, Drs. Gips, Olivieri, and Tecce, that allows the user to move the cursor on the screen of a Macintosh by moving his or her eyes. The cursor follows the location that the user is looking at on the screen. Basically, the eyes replace the mouse. Selection is made by looking at a small area of the screen for a short period of time, which causes a mouse click. EagleEyes is based on measuring a user's eletro-oculographic potential (EOG). The EOG is a small electrical potential which indicates the position of the eye relative to the head. Surface electrodes are placed on the user's head, above and below the eye, and on each side of the head to the left and right of the eyes. The five electrodes are connected to an electrophysiological amplifier which is connected to a computer. A program in the computer translates the signals received from the electrodes into the position of the cursor on the screen. When the user moves his or her eyes, the cursor moves.
What is the Boston College Campus School?
The Boston College Campus School founded in 1970 offers a comprehensive range of educational and supportive services to students with intense and multiple disabilities. Over sixty per cent of students enrolled during any given year have significant restrictions on language receptive and expressive capabilities.
The Boston College Campus School is a knowing and learning setting serving students with multiple disabilities ages three to twenty-one, as well as a select group of significantly disabled adults in supported employment. These special needs include a combination of cognitive delays, physical challenges, emotional/behavioral complexities, complex health needs, neurological complications, and learning/language problems. Health care services are provided by fully trained and board certified professionals from the disciplines of nursing, medicine, occupational therapy, psychology and physical therapy.
Teachers and support staff work closely together integrating services into functional natural environments throughout the school day. Classrooms and common facilities are attractive, cheerful and well-equipped. A new outdoor playground is totally accessible for children with or without disabilities and is adjacent to the school. The university setting provides daily interaction with a caring, socially active, and socially conscious community.
The school curriculum is language rich using a variety of instructional strategies some of which are traditional, and some are collaborative, with a heavy focus on assistive and augmentative state of the art technology. Approximately sixty per cent of the students are developmentally restricted in language receptive and expressive capacities. Each classroom (7 in all) along with the speech and language laboratory (8) are equipped with Power Macintosh computers. Four laser ready printers, one for every two computers are available to staff. Each classroom is staffed by a certified teacher who is assisted by 2 instructional assistants and student volunteers from the School of Education and various other university programs.
Phase #1 EagleEyes Technology
During the first twenty-first months, the EagleEyes Technology was used to conduct informal assessments of its usability and benefits in collaboration with the Boston College Campus School. In January 1995, an EagleEyes classroom was established in the Campus School. At the same time Dr. Francis X. Curran was recruited as the Coordinator of EagleEyes Research representing the School of Education. Dr. Curran was a natural choice because he and Dr. Philip DiMattia, Director of the Campus School, have been collaborators for many years with major research interest in helping children become as learned as possible. They viewed the EagleEyes technology as having the potential to become a teaching instrument for developing communication for a population whose physical and neurological disabilities seriously constrain their individual expressive capacities. A group of approximately twenty-five students, fifteen of whom were enrolled in the Campus School, eight enrolled in various public school integrated programs and two enrolled in another private school serving students with low incidence disabilities made up the study group. Each subject received training using the Eagle Eye Technology on average of twice weekly for thirty to sixty minutes per session. The major study question for this phase asked whether the EagleEyes Technology does what it proposes to do; i.e. allow an individual to interact with the computer through use of eye or head movements when connected to electrodes, with some level of consistency.
Each student's time on the system at each training session was determined by observation of each team member present. These members include: technician trained in running EagleEyes System, the Coordinator of the Campus School EagleEyes classroom, personal care attendants assigned to the individual student and a teacher who knows the individual student well and in most instances one or more parents of the students. Whatever the composition present, each person's observation was a vital determinant of each individual's tolerance for length of participation on any given day. Subject's comfort level and observed benefit of application were the observable behaviors. This was deemed an essential factor because of the special and unique disability circumstances of each student. As stated earlier, interest in this technology was heightened because of the possibilities that this technology could provide children without capacity for expressive language access to a voice they never had. For such children assistive technology has not as yet sufficiently developed such a system.
A second major question during this phase concerned the degree to which subjects could develop sufficient eye control skill so as to reduce the frequency of random selection by the subject on choosing items on the screen. A third question for Phase I was to what degree did subjects develop awareness. Also during Phase I a miniaturized prototype was developed and tested that would allow greater flexibility, portability, and a broader use of EagleEyes Technology.
Summary of Phase I Study Questions:
Phase I Results
The effects of trials completed during the Phase I activity have been most encouraging. Success of each of the five objectives supports the EagleEyes start up of Program Development Phase II. Indications are that this research technology offers the promise to educators of becoming a teaching and learning tool never before available to students with restricted language expressive and language receptive capacities.
What do Results Demonstrate?
Voluntary Choice
EagleEyes as a technology application allows an individual by selection to move the cursor on a computer screen. Over time each subject developed some level of eye control skill as measured by different eye painting samples (finger painting using the eyes).
Basic Interactive Level of Proficiency (BILP)
All students learned to use the EagleEyes system to some extent and all benefited from its use in some way. Each student learned to use the system at different rates. Eye control skill developed at varying rates allowing students to attain a Basic Interactive Level Proficiency (BILP) consistently when using a variety of computer interactive software. One subject was able to recognize and select on command letters for completion of a Father's Day card that read: Dear Dad, Happy Father's Day, I Love You, Michael. Not only eye control skill was demonstrated but also affirmation that Michael knows the letters of the alphabet.
Cause/Effect
After several training sessions on the EagleEyes system, subjects were aware of cause and effect relationships. Subjects demonstrated an observable understanding that they alone were making selections with their eye movements. This effect was communicated through facial expressions, vocalizations, and response to verbal command by a member of the training team. One subject was shown major color groups and was asked to select her most favorite. She selected blue. When shown several different shades of blue she was again asked to select her most favorite shade. She did. This choice was passed along to her Dad while looking for a new van wanted to know if his daughter had a favorite color. She did, she communicated it.
Miniaturized Prototype
A miniaturized prototype EagleEyes component has been developed and tested. This development allows for greater flexibility, portability, and affordability of the EagleEyes system. It will be possible to mount the EagleEyes prototype on a student's wheelchair so that it can always be available for communicating purposes. The Technology Team is developing a license marketing program with manufacturing becoming available in the near future.
Empowerment
A fifth result produced an unintended consequence for both the students studied and their parents. Each student showed observable excitement and enthusiasm through vocalizations and facial expressions on days and times of their scheduled appointments. Increased self-esteem appears to be a consequence deserving of further examination. Parents expressed the belief that their son or daughter prior to EagleEyes had never been asked to do anything for themselves. One subject while playing the space aliens game was able to score ten out of ten hits the space ships from the target field. One of the faculty managed 8 out of 10. Can it be that such disabled individuals can be competitive?
Commencement of Phase II Program Development
With the completion of Phase I objectives, a more rigorous assessment and analysis of tests of proficiencty will commence in September 1996 and will have four goals. First, is to test the use of EagleEyes Technology in areas of formal cognitive development through developed scope and sequence academic curriculum. For this segment there are five short term objectives identified that will be pursued:
A second goal of Phase #2 study will be devoted to development of personalized software to deal with medical/surgical and clinical needs. Because many children with multiple disabilities require ongoing medical and clinical care an important need is to be able to communicate and provide important reactive feedback to primary care and secondary care health providers. Through the use of the EagleEyes Technology it is possible to drastically change and replace the traditional role of passive client to one of active collaborator; one who is valued,respected, and empowered to participate in one's own health care. This goal will provide an opportunity to expand educational development in use of EagleEyes to researchers into the health care fields.
A third goal of Phase II will begin to explore training needs of providers in the use and evaluation of the technology broadening its use to a larger number of school districts.
Off Campus Training Center
The final goal for Phase II of the EagleEyes Development is to develop the first Boston College Campus School Eagle Eye classroom off campus and located in Southeastern Massachusetts. This location has been chosen for several reasons. A significant number of referrals for training on the EagleEyes Technology have been made from this region and transportation is a problem. Another reason for selection of this area is that one of the first students to use and develop BILP was placed in an inclusion classroom setting, a self contained lab has been set up in his home and his success has generated considerable inquiries from parents and local school districts from his region. It is expected that this lab when in operation will provide BILP Training to disabled students and technology training in use of the system to teachers, parents, and other personal care providers in Southeastern Massachusetts.
Finally, it is also anticipated that during Phase II more formal training programs will be developed in the use of the EagleEyes technology and in the use of application software that promotes a scope and sequenced curriculum commonly used in traditional public schools.
Summary of Phase II Objectives
Data collection for goals 1&2
Data collection will include observation and frequency rates recorded in each training session using current software programs to test eye skill control maintaining the goal of 80 % accuracy. Base line data will be taken at the beginning of introduction of phase II. With introduction of each software program, both personalized and commercial, frequency data will be recorded to measure per cent of accuracy over time.