HCC: Small: Multimodal Technology Tools for Universal Access to STEM Education under the Common Core Curriculum

鉴于解释数据的重要性，教育工作者已将图形概念的教学作为中小学数学教育的核心组成部分。不幸的是，典型的数轴或图形的视觉性质对那些有视觉障碍的人来说是一种严重的残疾。在美国目前的实践中，盲人学生用触觉图形来学习图形，这种图形通常是用凸点（类似于盲文）压印在纸上的图形。触觉图像是有用的，有它的位置，但越来越边缘化的原因有两个。首先，大多数视障学生现在与他们的正常同龄人在“主流”班级上课。主流化在很多方面都是有益的，但为学生提供其他形式却不太方便；此外，教师和其他学生通常无法阅读盲文。其次，许多教室正在使用计算机来学习数学和图形。触觉图形通常与计算机不兼容，而且目前能够兼容的工具很少，要么是初级工具，要么是极其昂贵的工具。在标准的台式电脑上，音频是视觉的自然替代品。使用听觉显示数学数据和图表并不是一个新概念，但是为了使这些听觉图表在学校课程中有用，还有很多工作要做。在这个项目中，PI试图通过探索即将到来的中学课堂图表教学的共同核心标准来解决这一需求，并建立一个软件系统，允许视障和视力正常的中学生使用声音创作和探索图表。该软件系统将根据共同核心标准确定的目标和操作进行生态验证过程，并将包括基于PI在多个数据集中计划的听觉图形感知实验结果的最佳听觉显示设计，并传达诸如不确定性等概念。更广泛的影响：该项目在辅助技术领域开辟了一个全新的领域，使基于软件的适应在课堂上成为可能和有效。视力丧失的学生可以从项目成果中直接获得更多的STEM材料；扎实的STEM教育将提高就业能力，进而对该社区成员的总体收入水平和生活质量产生积极影响。然而，更广泛地说，很明显，几乎所有人都将受益于适当设计和验证的多模式信息显示。因此，从这项研究中获得的背景科学知识将不仅在这个领域，而且在许多其他学科中都具有基础效用，而课程驱动的听觉绘图工具的进步将导致该技术在教育、人机交互等领域的各种新用途。

Given the importance of interpreting data, educators have made the teaching of graph concepts a core component of primary and secondary mathematics education. Unfortunately, the visual nature of a typical number line or graph presents a major disability for those with visual impairment. In current practice in the United States, blind students learn graphs with tactile graphics, which often represent a graph using raised dots (similar to Braille) embossed on paper. Tactile graphics are useful and have their place, but are increasingly marginal for two reasons. First, most visually impaired students now are in "mainstream" classes with their sighted peers. Mainstreaming can be beneficial in many ways, but makes it less convenient to provide alternative formats to the student; furthermore, teachers and other students will typically be unable to read Braille. Second, many classrooms are using computers for learning mathematics and graphs. Tactile graphics are generally not compatible with computers, and the very few current tools that are compatible are rudimentary or extremely expensive.On a standard desktop computer, a natural alternative to visuals is audio. The use of auditory displays for mathematical data and graphs is not a new concept, however much still needs to be done in order to make these auditory graphs useful in the school curriculum. In this project, the PI seeks to address this need by exploring the upcoming Common Core Standards for the teaching of graphs in middle school classrooms and establishing a software system to allow visually impaired and sighted middle school students to author and explore graphs using sound. The software system will go through an ecological validation process based on the identified goals and operations of the Common Core Standards, and will include optimal auditory display designs based on the PI's findings from planned auditory graph perception experiments in multiple data sets and conveying concepts such as uncertainty.Broader Impacts: This project opens a whole new field within assistive technology, making software-based accommodations possible and effective in the classroom. Students with vision loss stand to directly gain increased access to STEM materials from project outcomes; a solid STEM education will increase employability, which in turn will positively impact general income levels and quality of life for the members of this community. More broadly, however, it is clear that nearly all persons will benefit from appropriately designed and validated multimodal information displays. Thus, the background scientific knowledge that will be gained from this research will have foundational utility not only in this field but in many other disciplines as well, while the advances in curriculum-driven auditory graphing tools should lead to all manner of new uses for the technology in the field of education, HCI and beyond.