University of Arizona professors develop astronomy curriculum materials to aid visually impaired students

University of Arizona faculty members, headed by professor Dr. Steve Kortenkamp in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Dr. Sunggye Hong in the College of Education, have made groundbreaking strides to develop astronomy curriculum materials to aid visually impaired students.

Kortenkamp himself was originally a postdoc at the U of A, where he studied in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. His work has largely been in the realm of theoretical astronomy, or “computer simulations of gravitational interactions, asteroids, comets, and dust particles,” as Kortenkamp describes. 

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Over his career, Kortenkamp has excelled in both research and teaching, and he returned to the University of Arizona first as a part-time instructor, before joining the university full time in 2017.

According to Kortenkamp, he was confronted with the issues of inclusivity in STEM education early on in his teaching career.

“The first opportunity that I had to teach at the university in front of a class, one of my students was blind. And that, for me, was a big challenge.” Kortenkamp said. “There were very few resources available to sort of help in that situation.”

In order to make the course material more accessible for his student, Kortenkamp utilized audio aids and enlarged or simplified graphics with great success. Kortenkamp said the experience ultimately changed his outlook on teaching and his approach to inclusivity in the classroom.

“Each time I taught, I tried to develop some new things that I could use in that situation,” he said.

After joining the University full time, Kortenkamp crossed paths with Dr. Sunggye Hong, who shared his passion for making education accessible for all students. Hong runs the college’s program for the visually impaired and his past work has focused on braille reading, tactile communication, and STEM learning for students with visual impairments.

“I'm totally blind due to a congenital glaucoma, and as I was growing, science was a major that not many of my friends and colleagues with visual impairments could choose,” Hong said.

Hong's work has sought to address the lack of accessibility and barriers for students with disabilities in science, and create opportunities for visually impaired students to become engaged in science fields.

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“I think it was 2016 where I received a Request For Proposal talking about STEM learning for students with disabilities, and I began putting the ideas together.” Hong said “That's sort of where the collaboration began.”

In 2019, with grant funding from the National Science Foundation, Kortenkamp and Hong designed a new learning curriculum, which would assist and inspire visually impaired students studying astronomy. 

They brought together 33 participating students from middle and high schools across the country, all of whom had an interest in pursuing science education and STEM careers. The hope, Hong said, was to shape their experience with science and get them excited about a future in STEM fields.

According to Hong, there were two main components to the project. The first, of course, was science learning.

“It was kind of like an asynchronous online class,” Kortenkamp said. “We would send them packages in the mail, and then we would meet over zoom.”

To make the course material more accessible for the students, Hong and Kortenkamp compiled various types of tactile tools including braille, printed textile materials, and tactile graphics, as well as assistive technology equipment and audio software.

The materials also included 3D printed kits of spacecraft which had been modified or created to be easily assembled without sight. 

“They could – by touching – feel a square peg and a square hole, and assemble them, and they would describe the differences that they're feeling. " Kortenkamp said. “We also had them create a little video for each segment of the curriculum where they had to teach someone else, using their models.”

In addition to the virtual curriculum, the students visited Tucson and the University of Arizona on two different trips to supplement their learning.

“We had different activities every day,” Kortenkamp said. “They were taking tours of different labs on campus and living on campus for a week.”

The second, and perhaps most important, component of the experience was mentorship. Outside of classroom learning, each of the students were also connected with two mentors, a U of A science student, and another mentor who was a professional working in a STEM field, who was also visually impaired.

“We wanted to help them understand that they could work in a field that maybe at first they didn't think they had a chance to.” Kortenkamp said. “So we paired them up with someone working in the field as an engineer, or as a scientist of some type. They would virtually shadow them to learn about what their daily life is like, and how their disability influences how they work in their job.”

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According to Hong and Kortenkamp, the program had a profound impact on the students.

“The data clearly showed that the students were indeed much more closely engaged in science. The motivation was there,” Hong said. “We were able to hear from them using their own voices, and from their reactions, we could observe that they were very excited and motivated to participate in science.” 

“It’s not a surprise to any of us that many of them are now at a university working their way through,” Kortenkamp echoed.

And it wasn’t just the students who benefited from the program.

“To some degree with our curriculum, we were able to educate scientists as well,” Hong said. “It's not just for visually impaired students to learn about science, it is also an opportunity for the science field to learn about the unique needs of students with visual impairments.”

Kortenkamp shared similar sentiments. 

“The takeaway I have, as an astronomer, is that I would have never really thought about this kind of stuff if I hadn't encountered that first student in that first class that I was teaching,” Kortenkamp said. “It was a very eye opening experience for me, and it's interesting the way that these techniques can be used by anybody.”

Kortenkamp said the tactile models and teaching methods developed in the program can be applied in a traditional classroom environment as well, to aid all students, sighted or not. He has found that they encourage his students to engage with the course material in new ways.

“It does at least make everyone in the class aware of how it can be more inclusive,” Kortenkamp said. “I try to emphasize in class that these are also tools that can be used by students who are more tactile learners and visual learners. We could apply it not just to visual impairments, but to other kinds of learning difficulties.”

While Kortenkamp sees these successes as a step in the right direction, towards greater inclusivity in science, he said he wants to push the program even further.

“Going forward, I think it would be really nice to be able to take what we did and turn it into a University of Arizona class,” he said. “There are very few classes in the sciences that are geared towards visually impaired students, so I'd like to take what we have and modify the curriculum to make it fit into the system we have at the university. I would like to create a science class that is available for even non-science students, whether they are visually impaired or not.”

Though he said such a course might still be years in the making, Kortenkamp intends to continue using the methods and materials he developed, in his current classes, and his hope is to one day expand the work he’s done into a program that can sustain itself, “whether it's just in the state of Arizona or maybe even broader.”