I-Corps: Real-Time Graphical Presentation for Visually Impaired STEM Students

I-Corps：为视障 STEM 学生提供实时图形演示

• 批准号: 1632787
• 负责人: Jenna Gorlewicz
• 金额: $ 2万
• 依托单位: Saint Louis University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-18 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1632787&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Real; Time; Graphical; Presentation

Visually impaired (VI) students are challenged with learning highly visual content in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) courses using nonvisual technologies that portray only limited details and cannot be presented in real-time. Though there is a rising number of VI individuals seeking higher educational experiences, just under a third have attained a high school diploma. This situation is exaggerated in STEM fields, where much of the content relies heavily on graphical information presented visually. These unfortunate events are not due to VI individuals being incapable of high academic achievement, but rather, due to inadequate technologies and resources provided to them. Subsequently, there exists a dire need for a portable, refreshable real-time display of graphical information via nonvisual feedback that can be easily integrated within a classroom setting. This Innovation Corps for Learning Team project aims to assess the commercial viability, market potential, and technological impact of touchscreen-based educational curriculum that will enable real-time graphical information presentation through visual, auditory, and vibratory feedback. The proposed innovation leverages commercially available touchscreens and custom software created in the form of Android applications to translate visual content displayed on-screen into content that can be felt (through vibrations) and heard (through sound). The proposed innovation has the potential to bridge this technological gap and open up these new learning opportunities for VI students. The infrastructure and software in this work will promote a transformed classroom in which students with VI are independently interacting with their sighted peers and primary classroom teacher, in real-time via touchscreens. Each student would have a touchscreen that is wirelessly networked to their peers' and teacher's touchscreens (or smart board or laptop). As the teacher draws a graph or figure on his or her input device, this same image will immediately "appear," in a multimodal sense, on all of the students' touchscreens. While sighted students may primarily use the visual display of the information, students with VI can leverage vibratory and/or auditory feedback (using headphones) to explore the graphical content. This work lays the foundation for the creation of touchscreen-based educational curriculum in the form of Android applications that will (1) meet the customer need of a portable, multimodal, real-time platform for graphical information presentation, (2) enable classroom integration through the use of existing hardware, and (3) encourage widespread adoption through distribution in online application markets. The impacts of this work will not only address several barriers of graphical information transfer for VI students (a significantly underrepresented population in STEM), but will also lay the foundation for the creation of a universally-designed, learner-centered framework for touchscreens that may benefit all people, enhancing the fidelity and creating new dimensions of learning right at our fingertips.

视力障碍（VI）的学生面临着在科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）课程中学习高度视觉内容的挑战，使用非视觉技术，这些技术仅描绘有限的细节，并且无法实时展示。尽管正在寻求更高教育经验的VI个人数量增加，但仅有三分之一的人获得了高中文凭。在STEM领域中，这种情况被夸大了，其中大部分内容在很大程度上依赖于视觉上提供的图形信息。这些不幸的事件并不是由于VI个人无法获得高学术成就，而是由于提供给他们的技术和资源不足所致。随后，存在着可以通过非视觉反馈来轻松地集成在教室设置中的可移植，可刷新的实时显示图形信息的迫切需求。这项用于学习团队项目的创新团旨在评估基于触摸屏的教育课程的商业生存能力，市场潜力和技术影响，该课程将通过视觉，听觉和振动反馈来实时图形信息展示。提出的创新利用了以Android应用程序形式创建的可商购触摸屏和自定义软件，以将显示在屏幕上显示的视觉内容转换为可以感受到的内容（通过振动），并通过声音听到。拟议的创新有可能弥合这一技术差距，并为VI学生开辟了这些新的学习机会。这项工作中的基础架构和软件将促进一个转变的教室，其中VI的学生通过触摸屏实时与视力的同龄人和小学教室老师进行独立互动。每个学生都会有一个触摸屏，该触摸屏无线网络与同龄人和老师的触摸屏（或智能板或笔记本电脑）。当老师在其输入设备上绘制图形或图形时，在所有学生的触摸屏上，同一图像将立即“出现”。虽然有视力的学生可以主要使用信息的视觉显示，但具有VI的学生可以利用振动和/或听觉反馈（使用耳机）来探索图形内容。这项工作奠定了建立基于触摸屏的教育课程的基础，以（1）将满足客户的需求，以满足可便携式，多模式的，实时的图形信息表现的平台，（2）通过使用现有硬件的使用以及（3）通过在线应用程序中的扩展来启用教室集成，并通过在线应用程序进行广泛的采用。这项工作的影响不仅将解决VI学生的几个图形信息传输障碍（STEM中的代表性不足），而且还将为创建一个普遍设计的，以学习者为中心的触摸屏的框架为所有人受益，从而使所有人受益，并在我们的指尖上促成新的学习层。