A Proposed Paradigm for the Requirements for Designing and Using Digital Games-Based Learning by Educable Intellectual Disabled Children

. This study aims to shed further light on how to utilize digital games in education as a contribution to developing educable intellectual disabled children's teaching and learning practices via identifying the requirements for their design and use at those children's classes. Notably, the researchers focused on using digital games in promoting educable intellectual disabled children's learning experiences highlighting their different practical mechanisms and teaching practices based on literature review. Also, types of digital games capable of fulfilling the teaching requirements of those children were identified by making a list of the requirements for designing and using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes consisting of 38 various requirements divided into 3 major dimensions, namely: (1) educational requirements for using digital games-based learning; (2) instructional design requirements for using digital games-based learning; and (3) practical application requirements for using digital games-based learning. Then, the proposed list was applied to a sample consisting of 25 faculty members at 5 Egyptian universities. Following data statistical analysis, it was revealed that the questionnaire total mean score is 2.73 with a relative weight of 90.1%. In a nutshell, such values verify that the questionnaire all proposed requirements are, indeed, very important for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes.


Introduction
As a rule of thumb, intellectual disabled children's ability lack is considered an incentive and, at the same time, a challenge for conducting a plethora of research studies and conferences highlighting how to promote their limited psychological, educational, emotional, personal, linguistic and academic development in order to empower them to become good citizens in a society caring for their interests, fulfilling their needs and developing their abilities.
According to American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 1 , educable intellectual disabled children (who obtain only 50-70 scores at IQ tests) have the potential to benefit from learning basic skills, e.g. literacy and numeracy, good adaptability after finishing their special education schools or classes as well as self-sufficiency enabling them to live independently and have a job in the future.
Basically, the term "Intellectual Disability" (ID) is used in educational literature to refer to a specific group of children and adults who suffer from specific shortcomings in their intellectual development, communication ability and weak social skills. As a result, the emergence of such deficiencies leads to a significant slower development and learning rates, compared to their other normal peers. Besides, they may spend more time learning speaking, walking, self-caring and fulfilling their different personal needs (Fisch, 2005).
Furthermore, technology allows special needs children to express their ideas thanks to its numerous psychological, academic, social or economic benefits as it provides them with advanced software with several amusing programs and educational games that bring joy to those young learners; thus relieving their stress and anxiety side by side with increasing their motivation to learn and to acquire new behaviors such as: increasing children's awareness of the daily tasks and responsibilities assigned to workers of different jobs, shaping a better understanding for responsibility-shouldering concepts, carrying out requested tasks and duties as well as job discipline.

Study Goal:
This study aims to identify the requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes. Based on the above-mentioned definition, it's noticeable that weak adaptability to daily life situations is widely considered as a basic feature of intellectual disability various categories. Those individuals may suffer delayed development or lack of the so-called adaptive behavior skills, i.e. literacy, writing, receptive and expressive linguistic skills, financial concepts, self-direction, responsibility, self-efficacy, spontaneous behavior, understanding and following normative rules, carrying out daily life activities and employment skills necessary for joining labor market.
In light of the various technology tools provided to those children for promoting their excitement and motivation to express ideas, it is obvious there's, indeed, an urgent need to equip them with suitable opportunities to enjoy and feel self-satisfaction while participating in the educational process. Also, it's important to provide such children with the ability to benefit from the using digital games in formal learning processes at personal level empowering them to feel joy and excitement.
It's against such backdrop that it is significantly important to benefit from using digital gamesbased learning applications as effective instructional tools at intellectual disabled children's classes from an advanced integrated educational perspective; i.e. the main focus of the current study.

* Using Digital Games in Designing Intellectual Disabled Children's Learning Activities:
Generally speaking, the terms "Computer Games", "Video Games", "Electronic Games", "Online Games" and "Digital Games' are usually used synonymously to refer to approximately the same thing.
All in all, Ke (2009) defines digital games as all types and formats of computer, video and online electronic games whereas Chen & Wang (2009) define them as an effective instructional tool for enabling learners to construct knowledge via games, reach high levels of learning motivation and apply the acquired knowledge in solving realistic problems from their daily life. Becker (2005) provided us with list of the main learning theories that largely correspond to digital games design principles, e.g. Five Categories of Learning and nine events of instruction theories and multiple Intelligences theory). Becker (2005) adds that designing instructional and leisure digital dames used in education may much benefit from the support of a variety of different learning styles as exemplified by the possibility of benefiting from and he presented a prominent example represented in benefitting from the different learning levels emphasized by Gagné et al's (1992) instructional design model, such as learning the following aspects, namely: • Verbal Information: Presenting digital games for children using both phonetic and textual formats; • Intellectual Skills: Children's benefitting from learning the required concepts and problem solving rules like the majority of currently used digital games; • Cognitive Strategies: They are fundamental and indispensable aspects for enabling the players to carry out digital games required tasks; • Affective Attitudes: They are usually very important for role-playing digital games; and • Motor Skills: They can be developed through digital game tools, i.e. certain control devices, joysticks or touch screens.

* Correlation between Intellectual Disabled Children's Teaching Requirements and Digital
Gaming Capabilities: Based on literature review (e.g. Kalantzis, 1985;Brooks, 1997 1-Monitoring and Immediacy: Digital games enjoy advanced capabilities enabling them not only to monitor and follow players' behaviors but they also have the ability to offer them help when encountering hard situations besides providing hints for solving required problems, clarifying used steps, e.g. adventure, simulation and role-playing games; 2-Entrenchment and Practices: The majority of digital games rely on trial and error, repeating the used steps with the aim of enabling players to learn the required basic skills and continue playing via mastering advanced skills that contribute to realizing previously formulated educational goals; 3-Therapeutic Intervention and Assistance: This principle contributes to guaranteeing children' skills sustainability, correspondence with their prior backgrounds and assisting them to positively interact with others; thus helping them to relax when using simple leisure as well as drill and practice games accompanied by relaxing music and graphics; 4-Child-Centered/Individual Adaptation and Adaptive Curriculum: Digital games can focus on fulfilling one or more instructional requirements so that they are specialized as well as closely related to players' mental and chronological age in addition to their different interests and needs; 5-Curriculum Localization in the Direct Natural and Cultural Environment: Digital games are interactive in nature employing a narrative cinematic format contributing to an increase in their More specifically, 30 proposed a detailed list of the developmental requirements that must be fulfilled by the effective instructional design of digital games used in children's education classified into three main categories as follows:

1-Cognitive Considerations, including:
• Use of simple user interfaces for digital games containing very few, if any, written texts; • Being careful on using visual symbols as they require further explanations and interpretations that may differ from one culture to another; • Emphasis on the pivotal role played by parents in children's game-play; • Encouraging children to use language in discussing the different problems they face while playing; • Avoiding assigning children very complex tasks so that they don't return back again to rely on using the simpler initial thinking strategies that don't help them to master the required higherorder thinking skills; and • Taking into consideration children's various development speed that is usually affected by biological factors, dominant cultures and experience.

2-Socio-Emotional Considerations, including:
• Taking into consideration the possible negative effect of children's egocentrism during such early development stage which weakness their ability to understand other alternative opinions and viewpoints other than their own; • Children's egocentrism may cause their introversion and refusal of engagement with others; • Young children may be less interested to use competition tools to stimulate their learning motivation; and • 2-4 year-old children may perform irregular behaviors contrary to their 3-5 year-old peers who often carry out stable regular behaviors.

3-Psycho-Motor Considerations, including:
• Taking into consideration motor skill development levels, eye-hand coordination when designing suitable digital game user interfaces for children; • Taking into consideration the fact that children's eyes are not, in general, ready for gazing for relatively long periods of time; • Similarity of male and female children's physical structure without noticeable differences; and • Quick development of perceptual-motor abilities so that children usually suffer from spatialtemporal awareness disorders and unconsciousness of directions.
In addition, Bredekamp & Copple 9 provided us with other additional considerations which must be taken into account when designing digital games suitable for use in children's education, including: • Pre-assumption that children are not able to read so that they would necessarily need older adults' help for reading any delivered written texts; • Highlighting and clarifying the desired goals of designed games in a visually suitable format for children; • Endeavoring, as possible, to avoid using too much navigation arrows and hyperlinks by the designed game. If used, it is advisable to employ horizontal arrows as they are usually deemed more intuitive and spontaneous for children; • Placing the designed game active icons on suitable places on the screen; • Employing user interfaces containing backgrounds, colors and graphics suitable for children so that they don't cause them cognitive overload; • Use of 3D graphics, tactile stimuli in tandem with those children's motor skill development levels; and • Mixing audio and visual instructions together in a way contributing to the achievement of the maximum possible effect on children.

Types of Digital Games Suitable for Use in Teaching Intellectual Disabled Children:
The most important types of digital games suitable for use in teaching intellectual disabled children can be summarized as follows: 1-Drill and Practice Games: Digital games traditionally used for instructional purposes are usually designed according to the drill and practice game design models. Thus, they include problems or multiple-choice questions related to specific topic arousing intellectual disabled children's interest.
As a result, they generally focus on achieving a number of simple goals in addition to offering players multiple drill and practice activities at a certain course or discipline; Hovious & Van Eck (2015), the researchers summarized the most pivotal requirements for using digital games at educable intellectual disabled children's classes as follows: • Overcoming accessibility problems as they don't enable all those children to use digital games and benefit from them in the learning process on equal footing with their other peers; • Taking into consideration the narrative styles used by digital game narrative texts so that those children are provided with onscreen subtitles as well as suitable level of guidance and technical support, whether by teachers or game designers; • Taking into consideration intellectual disabled children's ability to carry out digital games assigned tasks. Therefore, their potentials and capabilities must be taken into account side by side with simplifying their understanding of the used games desired goals, easing game actions and providing its instructions in simple textual or visual formats. Also, audio may be used to take into account the needs of those children/players who suffer from reading difficulties or problems due to using written texts that are often unsuitable to their mental abilities; • Adjusting used digital games speed to adapt to children's cognitive and recalling abilities while learning. Therefore, their technical problems related to used games which don't match their own capabilities must be taken into consideration (e.g. participating in digital games requiring players to commit themselves to a pre-determined timing); • Observing children's performance during play as they may achieve digital games desired goals.
However, they mayn't realize their educational value because they only focus on their use as leisure/recreational tools without a similar focus on highlighting their educational value; • Training special education teachers on the technical issues related to using, operating and maintaining the digital games used in educating intellectual disabled children; • Paying more attention to available logistical infrastructure and facilities in order to maximize special education teachers' benefits from employing advanced digital games in promoting educable intellectual disabled children's teaching and learning practices for several reasons, most prominently poor budget as well as financial allocations and resources available on the ground; • Designing user interfaces with high intuition levels for those children; • Digital game interface symbols, lines, visual stimuli and commonly used components must be familiar to children; • Reducing the time periods allocated for operating and using digital games due to those children' short and limited attention span; • Taking into consideration control ability level (Qin et al., 2009) due to its correlation to players' ability to manage their control when playing digital games (e.g. using control mechanisms or storytelling flow). Kalantzis (1985) emphasizes the importance of being careful when using storytelling-based interactive digital games with educable intellectual disabled children so that simulation and role-playing games don't cause them to feel stressed and restless resulting from their non-understandable scenarios, graphics, audio effects or complex adventures for those children; • Providing the opportunity for identity formulation as it is important to provide players with suitable opportunities to make relationships and connections with digital game other characters or transform them, themselves, to become characters of those same games via using virtual reality (Bloscovich & Bailensen, 2011); and • Providing participation and immersion-supporting tools so that players feel present and immersed while playing and using digital games (Tamborini & Skalski, 2006 Results of many previous studies verified the effectiveness of using digital games, especially virtual reality-based computer games, with special needs and intellectual disabled children in teaching fire safety skills, improving communications skills and promoting those children learning levels (Vera More specifically, in order to properly address such research problem, the current study aims to answer the following main question: "What are the requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes?".
This main question is then sub-branched into the following three sub-questions, namely: 1-What are the educational requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes?; 2-What are the instructional design requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes?; and 3-What are the practical application requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes?.

Methods:
This study used the descriptive-analytical method in preparing the proposed list of the perquisite requirements for designing and using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes. The study sample consisted of 25 faculty members at 5 Egyptian universities affiliated to multiple disciplines, i.e. special education, early childhood and educational technology.

5-Instruments:
They included the proposed list of the perquisite requirements for designing and using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes in light of which a questionnaire was prepared containing this list various dimensions based on literature review and above-mentioned studies for formulating its initial form containing 40 requirements.

6-Procedure:
I-Questionnaire Validity: It has been verified using two methods, namely: 1-Referee Validity in order to benefit from expert peer-referees' opinions, amendments or revisions.
As a result, following receiving such amendments, the questionnaire final form contained 38 requirements.

Questionnaire Reliability:
It has been verified using two methods, namely:

1-Calculating Questionnaire Reliability Using the Cronbach's Alpha Method:
Cronbach's Alpha (α) Method was used to calculate the reliability of the questionnaire dimensions and its total score employing the "Statistical Package for the Social Sciences" (SPSS) software package as a tool for analyzing the data collected by the researchers from their pilot sample; thus concluding the following results: 49 and that the entire questionnaire can be used as a data collecting tool in the current study.

7-Results:
In order to answer their study questions, the researchers applied the survey questionnaire including the proposed list of the perquisite requirements for designing and using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes to a sample consisting of 25 faculty members at 5 Egyptian universities. Then, they statistically analyzed collected data using 3-Point Likert Scale to determine the response degree as follows: 3 = Very Important Response; 2 = Important Response; and 1 = Not Important Response. Accordingly, the following standard was used to judge results mean score values (Walpole, 1998): • If the mean score varies from 1 to 1.67, it's considered highly important; • If the mean score varies from more than 1.67 to 2.34, it's considered of a medium importance degree; and • If the mean score varies from more than 2.34 to 3.00, it's considered of a low importance degree. Notably, the study statistical treatments were carried out using the IBM® SPSS® Statistics 24.
Following field application of the study instruments, data statistical analysis as well as results discussion and interpretation (in light of the study previously mentioned theoretical framework and related literature review), the researchers would highlight their concluded results relevant to answering the study questions as follows: * Answering the First Question: The first question states "What are the educational requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes?" To answer such question, the researchers calculated the frequencies, percentages, mean scores and relative weights of the sample participants' responses to the questionnaire first dimension items that were then arranged in descending order in light of their ranks; thus concluding the following results: As Table (5) illustrates, the questionnaire first dimension has a total mean score with a statistically significant value; thus emphasizing the fact that the educational requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes have a high degree of importance. Notably, this result may be attributed to the significance of such educational requirements for designing digital games used in education as they are widely considered as their basic foundations.
* Answering the Second Question: The second question states "What are the instructional design requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes?" To answer such question, the researchers calculated the frequencies, percentages, mean scores and relative weights of the sample participants' responses to the questionnaire second dimension items that were then arranged in descending order in light of their ranks; thus concluding the following results: The third question states "What are the practical application requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes?" To answer such question, the researchers calculated the frequencies, percentages, mean scores and relative weights of the sample participants' responses to the questionnaire third dimension items that were then arranged in descending order in light of their ranks; thus concluding the following results: As Table (7) summarizes, the questionnaire third dimension has a total mean score with a statistically significant value; thus emphasizing the fact that the practical application requirements for using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes have a high degree of importance.
Furthermore, in order to identify the overall results and importance degree of sample participants' responses for identifying the requirements for designing and using digital games-based learning by educable intellectual disabled children, the researchers calculated the questionnaire total score in light of its dimension mean scores; thus concluding the following results: The study aimed to identify the requirements for designing and using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes in Egypt. Following statistical analysis, the researchers concluded the following main results for their study, namely: Second, Table (6) shows that based on statistical analysis of the questionnaire second dimension results focusing on the instructional design requirements for using digital games-based learning with intellectual disabled children, we notice that they provide us with statistically significant values either for the questionnaire items, dimensions or total mean scores indicators. Such results may be attributed to the high importance degree of user interfaces. Indeed, when we deal with any digital game, it is necessary for users or children to interact and to adapt to game user interfaces before being able to carry out assigned orders or instructions. Notably, such user interfaces are the first tools encouraging children to positively interact with applied games. Besides, without accessibility potentials, verbal instructions and technical support in tandem with children's disability levels, such games become useless.
In addition, used graphics and diagrams must be familiar to intellectual disabled children for easy understanding and interpretation. It's noticeable that children's navigation processes between digital game components are not usually complex or sub-branched to suit their capabilities and attention span. Meanwhile, digital games delivered content targeting educable intellectual disabled children must focus on developing their life skills and behaviors as well as developing their ability to functionally change sizes and colors to highlight important parts of used texts and diagrams (that must be few in the digital games specifically designed for those children). Third, as Table (7) concluded results concerning the practical application requirements for using digital games-based learning show, all proposed requirements have a high importance degree; thus emphasizing the top priority of training teachers on using technological innovations in general, particularly digital games, in maximizing their skills and making utmost use of such advanced tools in teaching intellectual disabled children. Undoubtedly, without providing training on using such games, it would be impossible to properly employ and benefit from all their various tools and advantages. In addition, accessibility requirements must be fulfilled in tandem with the inherent nature and characteristics of the targeted disability category whose children may become reluctant to use delivered digital games if they encounter any difficulties in their practical use.
In particular, the above-mentioned results emphasized that paying attention to digital games content and easy or difficult operation levels in tandem with the targeted disability category would ostensibly lead to making preparing their user manual unnecessary. However, designing digital game 61 Technium Social Sciences Journal Vol. 2, 37-66, January 2020 ISSN: 2668-7798 www.techniumscience.com with higher complexity level would ultimately require teachers to rely on standardized user manuals guiding them to how properly employ and use such games with intellectual disabled children.
Notably, such result came in tandem with the previous results concluded by following studies Fourth, Table (8) overall results concerning the requirements for designing and using digital games-based learning at educable intellectual disabled children's classes have high importance degree for the questionnaire all three dimensions. Notably, the instructional design requirements were ranked first as the most pivotal influencing factor of attracting intellectual disabled children to use digital games. Then, the educational requirements were second because they are, indeed, indispensable for those children's benefit from delivered digital games and accomplishment of their desired goals.
Finally, the practical application requirements came third as their fulfillment supports the digital games successful use and ultimately result in realizing their educational goals in practice.
It's against such backdrop that the current study has already answered its three sub-questions and discussed their relevant results in detail.

Suggestions and Recommendations:
• Fulfilling the requirements for digital games use activities before its practical utilization in teaching educable intellectual disabled children; • Making full use of digital games in developing intellectual disabled children's different life skills and concepts; • Involving parents as well as intellectual disability school administrators in supporting the success of using digital games; • Significance of taking into consideration the dominant developmental characteristics when preparing instructional design models for digital games used with educable intellectual disabled children as well as providing advanced training programs for teachers on how to produce and use digital games at those children's classes; and • Designing user manuals and handbooks for teachers for assisting them in using and employing digital games at intellectual disabled children's.