In India, over 200,000 children face severe visual impairment or blindness, with 15,000 attending specialized schools for the blind. These students are often excluded from hands-on STEM education, relying on rote learning due to visually dominant curricula. Science experimentation remains inaccessible, leading to waning interest in STEM and high dropout rates among blind students. To address this challenge, we focus on optics as a subtopic in science and explore how tactile materials and auditory aids can make optics experiments inclusive for visually impaired (VI) students. We describe the development of a hands-on prototype, including a light detector that produces an audible signal upon detecting light. We tested the prototype with VI students interested in science in grades sixth to tenth at the Institute for the Blind, Chandigarh, documenting their practical engagement and challenges. Preliminary understanding about optics was gauged through a short quiz before doing the experiment. Video analysis and concept mapping will follow to further assess their understanding of optics concepts by doing. Traditional classroom performance and quizzes will serve as control studies. This research aims to bridge the optics education gap for blind students, promoting experiential learning. Preliminary findings will provide valuable insights into the prototype's effectiveness and its impact on blind students' optics knowledge acquisition. By emphasizing experiential learning, this work strives to unlock STEM's potential for blind students, enhancing their educational experience and future career prospects.

In the age of rapid Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancement, universities worldwide have responded by offering specialized AI and Machine Learning (ML) courses to meet industry demands. However, amidst this surge in AI education, AI deployment's ethical and societal implications often need more attention. Unlike traditional algorithmic programming, AI involves intricate decision-making processes that are challenging to predict or explain, demanding a comprehensive understanding of its ethical dimensions. Various global initiatives have highlighted the ethical considerations surrounding AI, resulting in an increased emphasis on integrating ethics education into AI curricula. Despite this, there remains a gap in addressing these vital aspects across the broader AI education landscape, with ethics often relegated to the periphery of computer science courses. In this context, this paper explores the imperative for ethics courses in undergraduate AI education in India. We examine educators ' awareness and perceptions regarding ethics education in AI curricula through interactions with faculty members participating in professional development programs and workshops focused on AI pedagogy. Our analysis reveals that there is a pressing need to extend discussions on ethics beyond mere privacy concerns and traditional performance metrics, integrating real-life scenarios into the curriculum. This paper serves as a preliminary step towards a need for a general framework in structuring ethics education in AI in India, aiming to initiate a more comprehensive and standardized approach to AI ethics education, fostering responsible AI development in the future.

Solving engineering design problems requires the students to explore and understand the solution space to think creatively. Most of the current teaching practices of problem-solving in the context of engineering design are very structured not allowing much room for exploration. "Making" is the act of building or adaptation of objects to understand the functions of our environment. It involves opportunities to order the immediate environment around oneself which can serve as a cognitive function to provide insight into multiple solution strategies. In this doctoral research, we propose to build a learning environment (LE) to support the learners in learning the key skills and processes essential for making. With the help of some maker-studies, we will try to identify the key skills and strategies that they apply while making. In studies with novice makers, we will try to determine the challenges faced in learning and application of such skills. The findings from these studies will guide the design of our LE to support the learning of making.

Mastery of a shot technique is one of the important skills to be developed by novice badminton players. A shot technique includes the application of effort and swing of the arm. It is desirable for a novice badminton trainee to visualize the above parameters immediately after playing a shot. There has been an inadequate utilization of wearable technology for visualizing of these aspects. Myo armband, a wireless wearable device has the ability to sense the physical characteristics of effort and swing. CoMBaT, our Myo band based training system processes, and plots the sensor data patterns of a badminton shot for reviewing the effort and swing. Additionally, in our system, we have used the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm to compare the trainee data with a reference data to provide corrective real-time visual and haptic feedback. This paper describes the design and development of CoMBaT along with a study plan to evaluate its usability and effectiveness.