July 26, 2005
The Alliance proposes to work in broadening participation for students with disabilities in computing in two distinct ways:

Teaching Math to the Visually Impaired

USF-Lakeland will lead an effort for teaching math to visually impaired students. The mathgenie is a computer program developed over the last three years with a goal of providing a personal math reader to blind students trying to learn math at all levels in K-12. Work generated by a teacher for sighted students is automatically converted for use by the mathgenie, requiring no special knowledge from the teacher concerning such issues as a Braille code and preparation of equations for the blind student [MathGenie].

In year 1, USF-Lakeland will setup a lab to 1) teach visually-impaired college students how to use the MathGenie equation browser; 2) prepare university teaching faculty to use the mathgenie in their classrooms and labs; and 3) train K-12 teachers from the Polk County public school system to utilize the mathgenie in their classrooms. The alliance evaluation team will develop an evaluation to determine if such a tool is useful to college students and the ease with which teachers are able to integrate the use of the mathgenie into mainstream classrooms. By the time most visually impaired students reach the university, their math skills are well below expectations for incoming freshmen. The mathgenie should be very useful for these students in their remedial math classes and beyond. Though $7,000 is needed to initially setup the USF-Lakeland lab, replication of the mathgenie requires only software loaded on a standard Windows operating system.

Computing Education for Students with Learning Disabilities

The Southeast Alliance includes Landmark College, located outside of the southeastern geographic area. Landmark College was brought into the Alliance for their unique experience exclusively teaching college students with diagnosed LD. LandmarkÆs population is unique, with all students having a diagnosed LD and/or AD/HD. While all Alliance members have students with LD, in most cases, we don't know who they are. Landmark College brings to the Alliance: a unique populationùthey are one of the few colleges in the nation exclusively serving students with LD and decades of expertise, best practices, and techniques for teaching students with LD, which will be disseminated among Alliance members and to the broader IHE community via the web portal. One of the points of replication of the SLC at all these institutions is to determine if it is equally successful with diverse student populations. Landmark's participation in the SLC enables all of us to see whether SLC works well for LD students. If the SLC needs to be modified for Landmark students, then the other Alliance members will be able to modify their own programs to better meet the needs of all students, whether or not diagnosed with LD.

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