Parent Community

The Parent Community was an initial step towards developing an online community for parents of youth with autism spectrum disorder. This was the initial step, taken as a pilot study, to look at the viability, strengths, weaknesses, and future directions and possibilities for an online parent community. The parent community had two parts. The first part was online curricular learning. The parents had access to the parent-focused materials their children were learning at school regarding skills related to social competency. The second part was a community portal for sharing thoughts and ideas about the curriculum and anything else.

Design methodology

The theoretical pillars that framed the design for the online community were from Lave and Wenger's ideas on facilitating communities of practice. In addition, social navigation elements were built in such as "Who's Online" and "What other people have done" and "What are other's saying." Instructional restrictions were also put in place due to the linear nature of the content; for example, a parent couldn't do lesson six before doing lesson one, since lesson six built upon lesson one.

Evaluation

Qualitative research was performed through a series of interviews with parents. Unfortunately, due to the tight timeframe there was not as many family members who were able to participate and time to implement was a factor. However, the evaluation report (see below for the full detailed report) gave us ideas on how to iterate the project.