Tips for teaching computer science to students with special needs

Guest Post by Megan Nickels, Lisa Dieker, Trey Vasquez, Matthew Taylor from the University of Central Florida

Computer science education is on top of mind as our economy becomes increasingly knowledge and technology based. There will be an estimated 5.5 million STEM job openings by 2022, with computing occupations making up 2/3 of all projected new jobs in STEM fields.

While all children stand to benefit from CS education, children from special or vulnerable populations, including those with disabilities, may stand to gain the most. A number of children with special needs, particularly those who have trouble forming social relationships or are otherwise socially isolated (hospital/homebound), gravitate towards computers and computing applications. Computing offers a logical and consistent approach to problem solving that attracts these children to STEM fields.

At the University of Central Florida, we are researching the use of Dash & Dot to teach the STEM+C (computer science) disciplines to children from various special populations (e.g., children with critical illness, children with intellectual disability, children with autism, etc.). Dash & Dot are ideally suited to teach these 21st century skills to a wide range of children because they engage students through multiple learning modalities — appealing to auditory, kinesthetic, and visual learners.

In this blog post we offer some general tips for parents and teachers on using Dash & Dot successfully with students from special populations.

Getting Started

While the suite of apps for Dash & Dot are highly engaging, the coding challenges students must initially unlock to reach free play (think: Scroll Quest in Wonder) may be too reading intensive for some children. The easy solution is to unlock free play for your students ahead of time by completing the coding challenges yourself. This easy step will allow you to design explicit or guided instruction for introducing the programming language that is matched to your student’s needs. Here’s a shortcut for unlocking free play.

Sequence short activities. Start every lesson by showing students how to use a basic action that the robot can do. Start with a single, simple behavior and give kids a small challenge. For example: the behavior kids will learn is “turn left”. The challenge you can give is “make Dash spin around 6 times.” Introduce each of the other behaviors in a similar way: blinking, moving, nodding, changing colors, making sounds, recording custom sounds, etc.

Use step-by-step body syntonic prompts. Encourage students to use their bodies to plan their programs. They can take on the robot’s perspective by pretending to be the robot and acting out the robot’s behaviors. For example: you’ve created a maze for students to solve. In the planning phase, students can walk through the maze themselves, write down their steps, and then program those steps for the robots to take.

Give a simplified demonstration using a “think aloud” model. Try using the “think aloud” model when reading the instructions from Blockly challenges or the Scroll Quest in Wonder. Explain your thought process as you show students how to solve one of the challenges. Then turn it over to your students! Write out a few guiding questions to help them think out loud as they solve the challenges. Not only will utilizing this method help children to clearly distinguish steps taken to solve problems but will also help them learn to be better communicators.

Task Setting

It’s important to design or modify tasks for children from special populations to include a balance of direct instruction and strategy instruction. In regards to coding with educational robotics, strategy instruction means teaching children the engineering design process.

• Provide children with information or explanation about the robot’s behaviors, programming blocks, or procedures specific to the task.
• Use redundant text.
• Provide an advanced organizer.
• Scaffold tasks from easy to difficult

Instruction During Tasks

During instruction teachers must facilitate productive academic discourse concerning both the coding and the feedback provided by the robot (i.e., its execution of the code).

• Provide instruction in small group settings (2–3 children)
• Encourage children to ask questions
• Provide strategy cues (reiterate the engineering design process)

If you are in the Orlando area, Dr. Nickels and her colleagues are facilitating a series of workshops starting in October about integrating computer science into the classroom. Workshop IV will be focused on remediating core STEM content for vulnerable populations through the use of robotics — a format meaningful and accessible to all learners. We are working on potential live-streaming to those of you not in the area. Learn more here.

Dr. Megan Nickels is an Assistant Professor of STEM Education in the College of Education and Human Performance at the University of Central Florida and an alumna of Illinois State University. Dr. Nickels researches how children with critical and terminal illnesses (cancer, HIV/AIDS, sickle-cell disease, etc.) learn mathematics through the use of educational robotics. She conducts her research using Wonder Workshop’s Dash & Dot robots and the Lego Mindstorms EV3 robotics kits.

Dr. Lisa Dieker is a Pegasus Professor and Lockheed Martin Eminent Scholar Chair at the University of Central Florida and an alumna of University of Illinois. She coordinates the Ph.D. program in special education and is the Director of the UCF/Lockheed Martin Mathematics and Science Academy. Her primary area of research focuses on collaboration between general and special education and the implications of simulation in teacher education.

Dr. Eleazar “Trey” Vasquez III is an Associate Professor for the Department of Child, Family, and Community Sciences Exceptional Education Program at UCF. He earned his Ph.D. from Utah State University and is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA-D). His current research focuses on the evaluation of academic and behavioral outcomes for students with autism utilizing technology to enhance instruction. Recently his research has expanded from K-12 to postsecondary institutions and other venues to prepare students who are traditionally marginalized, such as those with executive functioning disorder, for careers in STEM related fields. Dr. Vasquez publications and presentations include quantitative, mixed methods, and single case designs utilizing technology to impact student performance. His research has been supported in part by $7.5+ million dollars from the National Science Foundation and Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.

Matthew Taylor is a doctoral candidate at the University of Central Florida in exceptional education. His research includes working with children with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities to learn STEM curriculum and actively engage in lessons using technology. He currently uses Wonder Workshop’s Dash and Dot robots to teach students with intellectual disabilities to code.