EAGER: Promoting algebra learning through an accessible expression system for students with visual impairments and blindness

该项目的PIS的长期目标是通过创建一个完全无障碍的教学平台来满足盲人学生和视力障碍者的特殊需求，从而改变STEM教育的事业。对于视力障碍和失明的学生来说，学习数学尤其困难，包括代数，因为它需要找到和描述模式，对数字进行概括，并使用符号和模型来表示模式。有视觉障碍的学生必须使用其他感官和认知能力来理解和应用典型学生只是观察到的概念，而不是依赖视觉线索。这个急切的项目旨在为在真实世界的课堂环境中研究哪种听觉和触觉表征将促进数学概念学习奠定基础。PI正在设计和改进一个允许音频和其他互动的平台，既可以与学习者交流，也可以让学习者用来表达他/她自己。该平台为视障人士提供数学材料，并为他们提供表达数学理解的方式。该平台内置的功能还允许视障学生和远程数学教师之间的互动，后者专门向盲人和视障人士教授数学。这项研究探讨了与传统的交互方式相比，通过计算机对学生提供数学输出和输入对代数学习的影响，并探索了不同输入和输出方式的承受能力和弱点。这将为掌握仍然存在的数学概念提供一个困难的基线；其目的是随后将进行明确促进学习的研究。对于视力障碍和失明的学生来说，学习数学尤其困难。对于大多数视力障碍的学生来说，学习数学，特别是高等数学的主要问题是由于课程的高度可视化。代数是通向其他STEM学科的门户课程，它特别直观。因此，许多有能力的视障学生从来没有机会完成代数等高等数学课程，从而阻碍了他们在STEM相关领域取得成功的前景。这个项目涉及改善这些问题的第一步，建立输入和输出技术，使视障学生更好地接触数学概念，并确定在学习数学概念方面仍然存在哪些困难。这项工作有可能帮助那些有视觉障碍的人更容易地学习数学；它的发现也可能揭示出帮助那些没有视力障碍但发现数学抽象很难的人更容易学习数学的替代方法。这个项目代表了一个未经检验但可能具有变革性的想法的早期工作，并可能促进在帮助盲人和视障人士更好地掌握抽象数学概念的技术开发方面取得快速和创新的进展。

The long-term goal of the PIs for this project is to transform the enterprise of STEM education for blind students and those with visual impairments by creating a fully accessible teaching platform that acknowledges their special needs. Learning of mathematics for students with visual impairments and blindness, including algebra, is especially difficult, as it requires finding and describing patterns, making generalizations about numbers, and using symbols and models to represent patterns. Rather than relying on visual cues, students with visual impairments must compensate using other senses and cognitive abilities to understand and apply concepts that typical students merely observe. This EAGER project is designed to lay the groundwork for investigating in real-world classroom settings which kinds of auditory and tactile representations will promote conceptual learning in mathematics. The PIs are designing and refining a platform that allows audio and other interactions, both for communicating with the learner and for the learner to use to express him/herself. The platform makes math materials accessible to the visually impaired and gives them ways of expressing their math understanding. The functionality built into the platform also allows interactions between visually-impaired students and remote math teachers who specialize in teaching math to those who are blind and visually impaired. Research explores the impact on the learning of algebra when students are provided output and input of math auditorily via a computer as compared to traditional methods of interaction and explores, as well, the affordances and weaknesses of different input and output modalities. This will provide a baseline of difficulties in grasping math concepts that still remain; the intention is that research on explicitly promoting learning will come after.Learning of mathematics for students with visual impairments and blindness is especially difficult. For most students with visual impairments, the primary issues with learning mathematics, particularly advanced mathematics, is due to the highly visual nature of the curriculum. Algebra, a gateway course to other STEM disciplines, is particularly visual. Therefore, many capable students with visual impairments are never afforded the opportunity to complete advanced mathematics courses such as algebra, thus impeding their prospects for success in STEM-related fields. This project addresses first steps in ameliorating these problems, putting in place input and output technologies that give visually impaired students better access to the concepts of math and identifying which difficulties in learning the concepts of mathematics remain. This work has potential to inform on ways to help those with visual impairments more easily learn mathematics; its findings may also uncover new ways of helping those without impairments but who find the abstractions of mathematics difficult alternative means of learning mathematics more easily. This project represents work in its early states on an untested but potentially transformative idea and is likely to catalyze rapid and innovative advances in the development of technologies for helping the blind and visually impaired better grasp abstract mathematical concepts.