Teaching Inclusivity: Interview with Molly Mollica, HuskyADAPT Past Student Chair
Introduction to Toy Adaptation:
In September of 2017, I was part of a group of students who drove from Seattle to Kenmore. We met with Dr. Dianne Hendricks and a teacher at Inglemoor High School. We discussed teaching high school students inclusive design. Designing inclusively can be defined as considering diversity of end users, whether in terms of ability, age, gender, culture, language, or other factors. We were part of HuskyADAPT, a student organization at the University of Washington dedicated to inclusive design in terms of disabilities. We talked about teaching students to adapt or “hack” toys.
This small switch requires fine motor control to operate. Not everyone can play with that toy
Off-the shelf toys, like other household objects, often don’t work for everyone, and are often inaccessible for many users with disabilities. For example, consider the pictured switch. This small switch requires fine motor control to operate. Not everyone can play with that toy. A simple, cheap way to adapt toys like this is to add a headphone jack. The jack can connect to an accessible switch, so anyone can operate the toy, even if the designers did not consider their abilities. For instance, large buttons do not require fine motor control to operate. Other switches respond to head tilt, airflow or other interactions. Adding the headphone jack is easy once you learn to understand the toy’s circuit solder. Instructions can be found in the HuskyADAPT Adaptable Toy List. Now you can make an exclusive toy inclusive.
Since that meeting, HuskyADAPT’s community outreach program has grown. One of the people leading this effort is Molly Mollica, a PhD student at UW in Bioengineering. She introduced toy adaptations to UW and was the student chair of HuskyADAPT for 2 years. She has also published papers and conference presentations on teaching inclusive design.
I asked to interview her because there is interest in bringing inclusive design into the curriculum, both at the college level and in K-12. Also, personally, I am very curious to see how the program has blossomed over the last four years. Whether you are actively thinking about how to teach inclusivity or learning it yourself, this is for you! Some of the exchanges have been edited for brevity with Molly’s approval.
How did you get started with toy adaptation?
I got started with toy adaptation when I was an undergraduate and master’s student at Ohio State University. A toy adapting non-profit called Replay For Kids taught us how to adapt toys. From this we formed the Toy Adaptation Program (TAP). TAP hosted regular volunteer events to adapt toys, added toy adaptation to first-year engineering curriculum, and taught community members to adapt toys. When I arrived in Seattle, I learned that there weren’t many toy adaptation organizations in Washington, so I found some like-minded folks who were up to the challenge of solving this problem. That’s how we formed HuskyADAPT.
Briefly, what is the HuskyADAPT K-12 Community Outreach program about and what does it entail?
The HuskyADAPT community engagement program works to foster an inclusive, sustainable, and multidisciplinary community to support accessible design and play in collaboration with community partners such as K-12 schools, clinics, and local companies. Sometimes, this looks like conducting a toy adaptation event with high school students and other times, it looks like a design-athon where Microsoft employees and UW students work in a team to design low-cost, alternative activation switches.
What is the purpose of HuskyADAPT’s K-12 outreach?
HuskyADAPT started to do K-12 outreach because in addition to designing and distributing solutions to accessibility problems, we also seek to train the next generation of diverse problem solvers. We think that working with K-12 students is a great way to do that.
How do K-12 students benefit and grow through learning inclusive design?
After engaging in inclusive design activities, K-12 students often mention that the part of the activity that they enjoy most is doing something impactful that helps people, using tools and taking apart the toy, learning how to solder, working with the University of Washington college students, and the moment when the toy worked. Ultimately, students learn tangible technical skills (tool usage, soldering, etc.), develop conceptual skills (circuitry and reverse engineering). Beside that, they also practice teamwork, communication skills, and investigate career routes through conversation with UW students.
“And the moment when the toy worked”
What’s one part of this program that you are proud of or really enjoy?
It’s great to engage with a classroom full of K-12 students at each outreach event. For all of the students in that class, HuskyADAPT is a small piece of their education that year. That’s great, but what feels even better is HuskyADAPT engaging with a high school student, and then they come to UW and become a leader of HuskyADAPT. Of our Exec Board members this year, two of them first engaged with us before they ever started at UW.
What were some unexpected challenges you encountered in setting up the Community Outreach program?
I think an ongoing challenge is that typically K-12 organizations want to engage with us during their school day or immediately after school. This is a challenge because we are a student, volunteer-run organization and many of us have class, labs, and research conflicts with these weekday, daytime requests. Ultimately, we just do our best to fulfill as many outreach requests as we can.
How has this program adapted to the pandemic? Will any of those changes remain after we have COVID under control, or will operations return to pre-pandemic times?
It has definitely been a challenge to do community outreach during the pandemic, for us, and for our community partners. We are participating in some virtual events and we are also using the time to plan and organize some content and curriculum to use in the future. I think that doing more planning and facilitating of engaging virtual events will remain to some extent as these could be great for certain situations, such as if a community partner is not local. In other situations, an in-person event will be a better fit, and we will return to our pre-pandemic model.
How can anyone get involved?
UW students can get involved by attending a toy adaptation event, joining a design team, volunteering at a community engagement event, following us on social media, and signing up to receive our twice monthly newsletter. The newsletter is where we announce all of our news and have signups for all of our events.
Community members can engage with HuskyADAPT by requesting a free adapted toy, suggesting an accessibility challenge for our design teams, hosting a toy adaptation event, following us on social media, signing up to receive our twice monthly newsletters, or supporting us financially by donating to HuskyADAPT.
[See page 14 and 15 of the Annual Report for more info]
Reflecting on Outreach:
I would like to thank Molly for taking the time to discuss HuskyADAPT community outreach and teaching inclusive design. If reading this has made you interested in getting involved you can learn about Toy Adaptation from the comfort of your own home with the HuskyADAPT youtube channel. I can confirm from personal experience that both doing and teaching toy adaptation and taking on a more complex challenge in a design team is very fulfilling and educational. Perhaps that will be a blog post for another time.
Knowing that students who first saw toy adaptation before they came to UW are now part of HuskyADAPT leadership speaks to the effectiveness of the model, and how far the organization has come in the last four years. Toy adaptation reminds me of labs in science and engineering classes. It is a collaborative teaching exercise designed so that most participants will successfully complete it and learn the relevant material. However, unlike most K-12 and early undergraduate labs, it has a direct positive social impact: the resulting adapted toys can be given to families, clinics and schools. I think this is a powerful combination.
Lastly, I would like to highlight some resources related to what Molly mentioned: First, the annual report Molly referenced. While the mention of 15 pages may seem intimidating, it is very readable and well-crafted. A link can be found in the references below. I have also linked “Toy Adaptation as Engineering Outreach to Diverse High School Students” and “Toy Adaptation for Children with Disabilities: A Translatable Means to Engage Engineering Students in Community Engaged Learning”. These are studies Molly co-authored about student engagement with toy adaptation workshops. I was particularly interested to learn that Toy Adaptation and Service Learning can engage students from groups currently underrepresented in STEM, such as women and minority students.
I hope you find these resources useful. If you are interested in learning about toy adaptation, or otherwise partnering with HuskyADAPT, you can find more information on their website: https://depts.washington.edu/adaptuw/.
References
1: HuskyADAPT, 2020. Annual Report 2019–2020. [online] Seattle: University of Washington. Available at: https://depts.washington.edu/adaptuw/news/huskyadapt-annual-report-2020/
2: Mollica, M., Feldner, H., Israel, S., Caspi, A., Steele, K. and Hendricks, D., n.d. Board 7: Work in Progress: Toy Adaptation as Engineering Outreach to Diverse High School Students. 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings. 10.18260/1–2–30090. Available at: https://peer.asee.org/board-7-work-in-progress-toy-adaptation-as-engineering-outreach-to-diverse-high-school-students
3: Mollica, M., Kajfez, R., & Riter, E. (2021). Toy Adaptation for Children with Disabilities: A Translatable Means to Engage Engineering Students in Community Engaged Learning. Advances In Engineering Education. Retrieved 15 April 2021, from https://advances.asee.org/toy-adaptation-for-children-with-special-needs-a-translatable-means-to-engage-engineering-students-in-community-engaged-learning/.
