This research paper discusses pedagogical and instructional approaches for K-12 education. As demand for engineers and computer scientists continues to increase, it is important to nurture a passion for STEM in high school students. However, a significant obstacle to contend with is low student motivation in rural and economically disadvantaged areas, which in turn may cause a lack of student success. In this paper, we examine students' motivation by using a STEM curriculum in which students from rural and economically disadvantaged schools are taught remotely using Zoom and a telepresence robot. Over the course of 11 weeks-approximately one semester-a curriculum that included a mixture of programming, engineering, and manufacturing was taught to 11th and 12th grade students in three different classes. Remote teaching was done by college students with a background in engineering (e.g., student instructors). These schools were used because of their remote location and underrepresentation in research. To measure student motivation in a teaching environment that uses telepresence robotics and Zoom, researchers collected the following data: a daily class progress document filled out by student instructors; weekly discussions between student instructors and researchers; and the submissions of student projects. Data on student instructor motivation was collected with surveys that had a mix of Likert scale and free response questions. The ratio of phrases about amotivation to phrases about motivation of the students was collected from surveys, discussions, and progress documents and analyzed. We found that the three classes exhibited varying levels of interest in the program, and that differences in class motivation fluctuated over the course of the semester. Classroom motivation may be influenced by the curriculum or technical issues unique to a remote course with co-located students. Finally, we found that the traditional relationship between student motivation and instructor motivation is not disturbed even though the students were co-located and the student instructor was remote.

Mathematics is indispensable to engineering and computer education. Indeed, the reading, performance and sharing of mathematics is analogous to the reading, writing and speaking of natural languages: Both are prerequisites for other fields of study, and both provide solutions to the very practical problems of communicating ideas across space, culture and time. Without mathematics, members of these fields would struggle to formalize, systemize and communicate ideas central to their missions. And yet the inaccessibility of conventional mathematical notation inhibits Individuals with Blindness or Severe Low Vision (IBSLV) from fully participating in this discipline. Such notations were designed by the sighted, for the sighted: They allow for the offloading of working memory to the page (as information is always accessible through sight) and take advantage of our immense capacity to remember both what information is present and where it can be found. If IBSLV are to be “first class citizens” of engineering and computer education, researchers must design tools that allow them to fully participate in the reading, performance and sharing of mathematics as well. In this paper, we make inroads into these problems by analyzing, contextualizing and framing the results of three computer-human interaction studies of MathSTAAR, a system which conveys mathematics to IBSLV. In the first, we found that a system which implements Vanderheiden's touch-and-speak model (in which participants can touch portions of a mathematical expression and have it spoken to them) allowed participants to correctly read more than 90% of expressions at a middle-school level, the level at which the average IBSLV falls behind their sighted peers. In the second, we found that augmenting this system with “coarse visual cues” (the highlighting of what is touched to allow IBSLV to take advantage of any vision they retain), allowed participants' to read, locate and relocate mathematical information faster than a keyboard system while also reducing participants' self-reported Frustration and Effort. In the third, we found that two multimodal approaches-one instantiated in our MathSTAAR system, the other instantiated in the Math Melodies application-allowed IBSLV to solve more than 90% of problems correctly. However, MathSTAAR did so while reducing both Frustration and performance time. We contextualize these findings in two ways. First, we show that even though many of those with sight consider reading mathematical expressions a trivial task, for IBSLV, this is not the case. Second, we employ Polanyi's ideas of particular and gestalt knowledge to show that both the nature of one's vision, as well as the tools one uses, greatly impacts what an individual might know and when they might know it.

Multimedia approaches retain a powerful ability to convey numerous streams of information simultaneously. When used appropriately, the uptake and comprehension of these multiple streams can be accomplished with relative ease, despite multimedia approaches typically conveying more information than their single medium counterparts. Given their power, this paper investigates how multimedia approaches can be leveraged to convey spatially arranged text. We do this with a special eye towards Individuals with Severe Low Vision, a group often forgotten in discussions of multimedia and who have a much-reduced capacity to receive information via the visual medium. We accomplish our investigation by comparing two tools for reading mathematical expressions, a form of spatially arranged text. The first is MathSTAAR, a novel system which treats mathematical text as a form of interactive multimedia. The second is JAWS, a screen reading tool which provides access to mathematical text via audio only. Researchers found that the multimedia approach reduced the amount of time it took for participants to relocate mathematical content while also reducing Frustration and Effort.

Supporting children’s writing activities is a primary concern in elementary-school grades. Using embodied means such as visual stimuli through pictures or motion pictures has been shown effective in supporting children’s writing. To guide children during the writing activity, contextual cues are usually provided in face-to-face classroom practice with interactive instruction from a teacher. This paper explores the design of an interactive online system for video-scaffolded writing with contextual cues. In our online study with 13 children, we explored two approaches to designing contextual cues: temporally situated and visually situated. Participants were divided into two groups, each using a web-based interface to watch an animated video and write the story guided by one of the cue designs. We analyzed the children’s writing process and outcome in both groups. Our results show that temporally situated cues support a stronger overall story structure, while visually situated cues support more descriptive and interpretive writing.

The promise of anyone being able to 3D print anywhere relies on both technological advances and incremental shifts in social organizations to trigger changes in human behavior. While much research has focused on how people learn aspects of predefined printing processes, such as expressively utilizing particular design-software (e.g. CAD) and fabrication-machinery (e.g. 3D Printers), this work explores how anyone may gain an understanding of what can be 3D printed through dynamic-processes in computationally-guided exploration of online resources and 3D printing facilities. Investigations surrounding online printing services reveal accessible 3D printing processes that do not require end-users to have experience with design-software or fabrication-machinery, only requiring end-users to specify printable ideas. We present these accessible printing processes alongside associated technologies in a meta-design framework for supporting end-users’ specification of 3D printing ideas. Informed by this framework and a series of formative studies, we designed the website HowDIY to introduce anyone to 3D printing by encouraging and facilitating the intelligent exploration of various online resources. HowDIY was deployed over several weeks with diverse newcomers to 3D printing, validating that intelligent user interfaces can support anyone to participate in the utilization and design of 3D printing tools and processes.