Education-Research | Swaroop Joshi

Computational Thinking for Children with Disabilities

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 19:38:34 +0530

Computational Thinking (CT) is one of the 21st-century skills. It is considered crucial in determining the success and livelihood opportunities of the coming generations, just like literacy and maths were for the previous generations.

However, existing mainstream tools for teaching CT, such as Scratch, are not divyang-friendly. Unless we work on bridging this gap, we risk leaving these already underprivileged children further behind. The also emphasises on inclusive culture in schools, catering to the needs of all students, including those with disabilities.

In this project, we are working on designing and developing a set of game-based learning tools with tangible blocks and tablet apps that help children with certain disabilities develop computational thinking skills.

Collaborations:

Prof. Basavadatta Mitra, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus
Prof. Sujith Thomas, Dept. of Computer Science and Information Systems, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus

This project is supported by BITS Pilani CDRF II.

Accessible Science Labs

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 16:01:28 +0530

This project is no longer active.

Background

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 ( ) states that educational institutes should “provide reasonable accommodation according to the individual’s requirements and provide necessary support, individualised or otherwise, in environments that maximise academic and social development consistent with the goal of full inclusion” (Art. 16(iii-iv)). However, about 75% of children with disabilities (CWD) in India in their lifetime. CWDs are poorly represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, partly because CWDs face access challenges to typical science labs in secondary, higher secondary and university settings. Access barriers may prevent students from gaining knowledge, demonstrating knowledge, and fully participating in lab activities.

We designed an Assistive Technology, SAlly (short for science accessibility or science ally), to address these challenges as part of the . It uses sensors to measure liquids in a beaker accurately. Thus, using the current prototype of SAlly, a visually impaired student can:

Identify various chemicals using accessible labels on the containers
Independently measure and pour out the required quantity of a liquid.

Ongoing work

We conducted user studies of our prototype with visually impaired students and their teachers in a school in Goa. Based on the feedback, we plan to refine the project to achieve these objectives:

Categorise the science experiments in Grades 6-12 in the NCERT curriculum so that similar experiments can be grouped and made accessible using the same technological innovation.
Modify and enhance the existing prototype to enable visually impaired students to independently pour out accurate volumes and identify a change in the colour of a chemical as a result of a reaction.
Create a lab manual that enables blind students to utilise our device to carry out experiments and for their educators to guide them.

We will evaluate existing sensors and smart devices that can identify changes in the colour of a liquid and incorporate the appropriate one in our prototype. We will then internally test the prototype with BITS students, followed by user testing with visually impaired students and their teachers in different contexts.

This project is supported by

Approaching me for research projects

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:50:42 +0530

A list of

working in my research group.

Hello students!

Approaching faculty to find appropriate research projects is essential to your academic life. This post provides some valuable tips for making communication easy and efficient for both of us. I will update it occasionally by adding new projects, removing old ones, and modifying some details.

Please read carefully before approaching me.

First, I work in (computing) education research, an emerging, interdisciplinary field, with applications of the core CS concepts (like programming language design, natural language processing, etc.) to human-computer interaction, learning theories, and behavioral studies. Make sure you really want to work in this field before approaching me. (Of course, if you are simply curious about this field and my interests, don’t hesitate to ask questions.)
Prerequisites:
- Foremost ones are being proactive, punctual, and having good communication skills¹.
- Basic statistics is required (can be a co-requisite²); inferential statistics is desired.
- For certain projects, mastery in basic CS concepts (software engineering, object-oriented programming, data structures and algorithms) is essential.
- Having prior teaching or research experience is desired but not required.

How to contact me

Read through the descriptions of my .
Email me your resume, the title of the project you want to work on, and a 300-500 word description of why you want to work on that project.
Include any relevant information, like teaching or research experience.
Mention (a) at least one book³ you have read in the past year, or (b) if you haven’t read a good book in the past year, your all-time favorite book, or (c) if you don’t have a favorite book, your favorite movie or TV show.

Note

If your initial email does not demonstrate that you have read this page, you will not get a response.

Prospective Ph.D. students

There are exciting research questions at the intersection of computing education and accessibility.

I look forward to working with part-time or full-time Ph.D. students to explore those questions.

Interested students should note some important points:

Familiarize yourself with the BITS Pilani . Admissions happen through the BITS process; interest from a faculty does not guarantee admission.
Please let me know if you are looking for a full-time Ph.D. position or part-time. Full-time students stay on/near the campus and attend classes/meetings regularly. Part-time students typically fulfill the requirements remotely while working in the industry or academia; part-time positions are not advertised every semester.
The second bullet under ‘How to contact me’ above is even more critical for Ph.D. applicants. Besides explaining why this particular project, explain in detail why you want to do a Ph.D. in the first place (what are your career goals, how a Ph.D. in this area will help you achieve those, etc.).

Masters’ degree (HD) students

For the research practice course, I will expect the following deliverables from you (apart from the final evaluation by the institute):

Reading and presenting (to a small group) 2-3 relevant research papers,
Developing an artifact (a piece of software or a document) that reasonably advances the project.

For the thesis or any other course, we will discuss the expectations and deliverables on a case-by-case basis.

I will work with only a limited number of students, so make sure you approach me well in advance (at least two weeks before the relevant deadlines).

Undergraduate (FD) students

If you are interested in doing your project course(s) with me, please be advised that I would like to see your work before formally assigning you to a project. Keep this in mind and approach me early so you can work with me without affecting your coursework and graduation schedule. The expected deliverables are similar to the HD courses listed above.

I expect FD students to work with me for a semester or so, before enrolling for a formal project course.

Good communication skills need not mean speaking or writing English. The vocabulary of a particular language may limit you at first, but if you can communicate well in one language, you can (with some effort) communicate in other languages too. On the other hand, if you cannot communicate in any language, including your mother tongue, it is unlikely you will communicate well in English. ↩︎
I you have not completed the stats courses yet, you can learn the relevant concepts on your own while you work with me. ↩︎
Any language, any genre ↩︎

Geogame

Wed, 27 Apr 2016 17:01:23 -0600

This project is no longer active.

GeoGame is a web based role-playing game developed to let the students of geography experience the life of an ordinary farmer in developing countries, and thereby learn concepts of green revolution, etc. It is developed using MVC .NET architecture. I worked on this NSF-funded project (Grants and ) as a graduate research associate in .

For more information, read our book chapter “ ”.