Since the beginning of the 21st century, the lifespan of people born with Down syndrome (DS) has increased. They now outlive their parents and rely on their relatives who usually sacrifice their own families to care for their disabled siblings. To reduce the pressure on families and the wider community, it is crucial to prepare DS people for independent life from early childhood. Emerging technologies can significantly support the process of acquiring the skills that are necessary for solving real-life problems at home and work. To assess their impact and estimate how much they are implemented in inclusive education, a review of 564 papers published after 2015 was done using the PRISMA review model. After gradual exclusion, 24 papers were used for the final review. Thematic analysis resulted in four themes with one common concept: variety. The results of examining the four research questions defined in the paper’s background confirm that the synergy of emerging assistive technologies and inclusive education has the potential of becoming a very effective strategy for creating an independent life for DS individuals. Many questions remain open, mainly related to a DS persons’ specific needs and capabilities. The acceptance of the proposed synergy will depend on them.

The new version of ACM and IEEE-CS Computer Science Curricula envisages the preparation of a dozen white papers within more than a third of the Body of Knowledge courses. Lack of experience in conducting research, insufficient ability to articulate thoughts, non-observance of defined recommendations, as well as forgotten verification of what has been done are key challenges in the implementation of these recommendations. Large language models (LLMs) can significantly support the creation of anticipated white papers, encouraging initial directions and inspiration for research, as well as a focused presentation of key elements of the work. Unfortunately, they can also hinder the creation of expected academic texts, promoting the superficiality of research and the presentation of unverified information. In order to facilitate progress in acquiring the necessary writing skills without discriminating against those students who have already acquired them and prefer traditional writing, we have defined a series of strict rules and strategies for preparing the briefing reports with complete, partial, or no reliance on the LLM. They were embedded into the faculty learning management system, implemented, and evaluated twice with more than 150 students during the academic year 2023/24. This paper presents a new approach along with the lessons learned from the first attempt and the changes incorporated into the second. Based on these two carefully designed, conducted and analyzed studies, teachers and students gained a very positive opinion about the impact of LLM on the creation of quality student reports. The effectiveness of the new approach is a guarantee that optimization of the integration of AI-generated content can become a benchmark for the successful preparation of student reports that can be recommended to the wider academic community.

The birth of current students coincides with the rise of the first social media websites, making young people the most competent and the most frequent consumers and creators of social media content. Their savoir-faire in new technologies is a great motivation to intensively use various e-learning 2.0 elements in the process of learning, teaching and knowledge acquisition. This paper presents the experience from a study that stimulates the social media elements existing in the learning environment, and reinforces the use of various techniques intended to enable focused online collaboration and knowledge acquisition. In order to support cutting edge learning, the approach stimulates a pervasive access to scholarly articles, breaking news existing online, and open educational resources. The study has been performed for almost a decade in computer ethics courses attended by senior undergraduates from the University of Skopje, Macedonia, and junior graduates from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. The paper exhaustively overviews the simulation of the social media inclusion in the learning process, as well as the activities performed during its execution. The subjective student impression of all implemented techniques is contrasted with the teacher estimated amount of acquired knowledge. The paper also emphasizes the benefits of the implemented approach, suggestions to educationalists intending to employ it themselves, and finally the intentions of the further inclusion of social media in educational technologies.

Large language models (LLMs) have achieved planetary popularity and have become accepted in higher education. On the basis of face-to-face interviews, a survey examining students' attitudes about the integration of LLM into education, and our own academic experience, we defined a realistic solution for creating assignments. It embraces essay writing as well as various aspects of computer programming. The experiments were carried out during the winter semester of academic 2023/24 at two universities from two different countries. This paper presents the experience gained in the creation of two different computer science assignments with and without the use of LLM. Comparative analysis refers on three approaches: traditional or manual assignment preparation without using any LLM; full reliance on LLMs; and a hybrid mode, depending on the amount of application of the LLM in the preparation of the assignment. The proposed solution was evaluated quantitatively, with the aim of becoming a benchmark for examining the integration of LLM studies into higher education. Findings reveal the importance of hybrid mode, as the most preferred approach among students.