Happily bridging the computational thinking divide

“I see 10!” shouted Izin Jobins in an online Computational Thinking game session organized by Vision Empower and stole the hearts of the entire online audience at the Computational Thinking in Schools (CTiS) 2021 conference! They may have clapped from the confinement of their homes for this victorious little wizard, who convincingly won “I see 10”, albeit without eyesight from a remote village in Kerala.

The T in STEM – unplugged

But you may wonder why we decided on games, and what do games have to do with computational thinking (CT) at all, especially for children with visual impairment. The Vision Empower (VE) team works to make STEM education accessible for children with visual impairment by addressing the fundamental challenges of lack of accessible content, inadequate capacity among existing teachers of science and math at special schools and the lack of affordable assistive technology. In a digital age infused with electronic computing devices and software platforms, CT skills are seen as critical for everyone, and not only for computer scientists.

Jeannette Wing suggests that in addition to learning reading, writing and arithmetic, we should add CT to every child’s analytical ability (Wing, 2006). Among other skills, CT entails thinking logically, recognizing patterns and abstractions, and understanding how to systematically decompose a problem and then compose an algorithmic solution. Wing argued that those in possession of computational competencies will be better positioned to understand and take advantage of a world with ubiquitous computing.

CT as a curricular topic

Computational Thinking made its way into selected Indian schools in 2016 when Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) India started CSpathshala, an educational initiative to introduce CT into formal school curricula in K-12 education and a vision to teach computing as a science to every child in every school in India by 2030. However, the visual treatment of the curriculum meant that the numerous CT lessons created through crowdsourcing from teachers were not accessible enough for children with visual impairment.

While CT was already being considered a mainstream requirement for sighted children at schools, the designers were oblivious of the needs of 1.1 million children with visual impairment in the country attending special schools for the blind. For decades, the students and their teachers remained unaware about Computer Science studies or the importance of problem-solving skills.

The journey of making CT accessible

The CT divide was observed by the VE team in the special schools for the blind during the pilot of accessible math pedagogies in middle school. The team began a research initiative on methods to bridge this gap, using tactile methods such as modifying playing cards or using pebbles of different shapes and sizes. The CSpathshala syllabus created by experts, is based on the four principles of CT – viz., decomposition, pattern recognition and generalization, algorithms, and programming.

These principles were applied to the learning areas obtained by combining the guidelines from the Foundations of Number Sense (FONS) framework and the Indian NCF 2005 for Math and Computation. We created accessible CT learning modules on – Systematic listing; Counting and reasoning; Iterative patterns and processes; Information Processing (Data); Discrete Mathematical Modeling; Following and Devising Algorithms and Programming; and Digital literacy.

We launched Project VICT (Computational Thinking for persons with Visual Impairment) to make this curriculum accessible using the Ludic design for Accessibility (LDA) approach and thus initiated the students with visual impairment in India into CT early enough to equip them to participate in the digital age. LDA is based on the premise that play and playfulness are central to what makes us human. Play forms an important foundation for the development of skills in all children. Unfortunately, for infants and children with disabilities, real play may be absent or diminished due to accessibility concerns.

It has been pointed out that children with disabilities have a higher chance of being left out of play while they grow up, which may have serious implications on the cognitive development of the children (Swaminathan & Pal, 2018). Any ludic-designed artefact or activity must have five (5) attributes. The activity should be performed on free will; the player should gain no material incentive by playing it; it should be an activity that is within its specific boundaries of space and time; it should be an activity that promotes the formation of social groupings; and it should be capable of delivering the intended side effect such as a particular skill or learning to the end user (for more information, please see here).

Playing the way to CT despite challenges

Recognizing the importance of ensuring that the methods result in learning outcomes which are easily comparable to proven pedagogical approaches, especially for numeracy in K-4, a rubric of Learning Areas and Learning Indicators were created for each game. We then focused on creating various games and tactile play kits which can be played remotely with minimal material requirements, available in all schools and homes. The VE team started by conducting weekly play sessions with children at the special schools. In 2019, we introduced the Torino tactile programming tool from Microsoft Cambridge as a pilot in Bengaluru. We were delighted to observe the joy in children with visual impairments playing their way to creative problem solving (Gesu et al 2020). The tool is now launched by Humanware as Codejumper.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic brought in new challenges as the schools were shut down and the children went back home. This led to the birth of a hybrid LDA approach where the VE coordinators got on phone calls with the children to conduct the play sessions while simultaneously training the teachers. After three years of continuous engagement with some children, the VE school coordinators and teachers in the schools shared that they have started to notice improvement in children in terms of their understanding on the fundamental concepts of numeracy, interest generation and ability to solve problems in math through the various games they play as part of their VICT sessions, without increasing their cognitive load.

Snapshots of the VICT page to highlight the different learning areas and learning indicators of CT. In addition to Subodha CT Courses.

Changes ushered

Eight state governments have endorsed Project VICT. Teachers in special schools in 14 states have shown great interest in this pedagogic approach. VE was tasked by Government of Odisha (GoO) to create a Disability Innovation & Experience Centre based at Integrated Infrastructure Complex (IIC), Khudupur Experience zone at IIC (Inclusive I Center) for students and teachers. It is a space to showcase all the interventions and create programs to generate awareness and possibilities of inclusion in STEM education in general and CT in particular.

Having been continuously trained through VE’s flagship Pragya teacher training program, teachers in these special schools are now equipped to conduct play sessions with children effectively, while helping them grasp the learning areas each game targets. VE has been engaging with the broader CSpathshala community of practice of CT since 2021 and demonstrated the possibilities of inclusion in CT. It has also conducted workshops on inclusion in the pedagogy of CT, to the delight of hundreds of teachers from mainstream schools, faculty members from leading universities and industry experts at the CT in Schools (CTiS) national conference conducted by ACM India.

While capabilities of children with visual impairment were showcased by VE in CTiS 2021 along with an online participatory workshop demonstrating the “player” role of the teacher, VE conducted the Tactile and Accessible Computational Thinking (TACT) grand challenge in 2022 with entries from multiple universities and corporates. A compendium of tactile games has been curated with the ten winning entries.

There was a leap in the journey of inclusion in STEM education overall, when other than two abstracts from VE, six paper abstracts were submitted by 13 teachers from special schools across India to the CTiS 2023 conference. Eight teachers were selected as finalists. They presented their first ever academic paper at a national conference, a moment of glory for inclusive education.

Reminiscing the CT journey, VE’s Educational Coordinator Rajeswari shares, “I started conducting offline sessions with children since Jan 2022. When I look back, I notice the progress in children in their communication, in their expression and comprehension, socializing skills and being sportive while playing. Their enthusiasm and joy in participation is palpable. I can also feel that they are learning while playing, which is the objective of Project VICT.”

Project VICT is on the path of continuous improvement. Baselining assessments have been designed after rigorous secondary and primary research. These assessments are being conducted in schools across the country. Game clusters are being created through identification of dependencies in basic concepts, to help the children on a progressive learning trajectory. Besides, a new TLM on introduction to CT for teachers has been developed. This has been designed to help them understand the application of the games in the learning process. Our research suggests that the foundational CT concepts may be introduced to children as a part of an inclusive math curriculum to avoid cognitive overload and optimal utilization of school time.

References

1. Gesu India, Geetha Ramakrishna, Joyojeet Pal, and Manohar Swaminathan. 2020. “Conceptual learning through accessible play: Project Torino and computational thinking for blind children in India.” Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD ’20), June 17–20, 2020
2. J. M. Wing. “Computational thinking.” Communications of the ACM, 49:33–35, 2006.
3. Swaminathan, M. and Pal, J., 2020. “Ludic design for accessibility in the global south. Assistive Technology and the Developing World”, Editors: Michael Stein and Jonathan Lazar. Oxford university Press.