Helen A. Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities

Real-time feedback is part of a holistic approach to helping new teachers succeed

Sarah Holland — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:13:51 +0000

Real-time feedback is part of a holistic approach to helping new teachers succeed Sarah Holland Mon, 11/18/2024 - 14:13

When you think of uses for bug-in-ear technology, futuristic communications or covert operations are probably the first to come to mind. Teaching is almost certainly not the first, or second, or perhaps not even the hundredth thing.

Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

But at ��AV, faculty members are always looking for unique approaches and innovative solutions to challenges. Challenges like sharing real-time feedback with education interns so they can best serve their students.

Supported by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), the Dynamic Coaching Outreach Program in Special Education: General Curriculum (DCOP) through the College of Education and Human Development and the Kellar Institute for Human DisAbilities helps facilitate a “more dynamic coaching and feedback cycle” throughout the teaching internship experience through the use of technologies like bug-in-ear, video conferencing, and more. Specifically, the program supports those interns pursuing their master of education (MEd) in special education.

The special education graduate students have different needs than other MEd students, in that they are often working full-time in the classroom with a provisional license while completing their studies. Because they are provisionally licensed, they do not have mentor teachers in the classroom with them as traditional, pre-service interns do; they rely more on university supervisors during their internship to give feedback. DCOP was designed to provide new pathways for that feedback in order to address these unique needs.

When the program was originally developed in 2012, it was almost exclusively about the use of bug-in-ear technology to provide immediate live feedback to special education teacher interns in the classroom. In the past five years, the program has expanded into a three-pronged approach: using technology to enhance supervision, developing a novel eCoaching process, and incorporating professional development for both interns and supervisors.

“The eCoaching model takes a nonevaluative approach,” explained Kelley Regan, professor of education and the principal investigator (PI) on the VDOE grant. “It’s encouraging, supportive, and flexible.”

The goal of an internship for any teacher is to have the opportunity to practice what they’ve learned in a live classroom environment. ECoaching has the additional benefit of more structured feedback loops from supervisors to interns to provide high-quality and more instantaneous feedback at a much greater frequency.

“You can observe a classroom over Zoom, then immediately send an email with feedback, for example,” Kristen O’Brien, associate professor of special education and co-PI, said.

But as Peggy Weiss, associate professor and co-PI, explains, it’s not just about the technology: “It’s about how they use the technology to support teacher interns in reaching the goals established with their supervisors.”

And sometimes, the most valuable techniques are the simplest. Cheryl Temple, one of the supervisors in the program, once had two interns in different schools facing the same challenges in their classroom. A facilitated video call with the three of them gave the interns an opportunity to learn from each other and brainstorm possible solutions.

Shilpi Patel, adjunct professor at George Mason and internship supervisor for DCOP, utilizes weekly virtual eCoaching sessions to provide continuous nonevaluative feedback, reflection, and goal setting for her interns. For two of her interns, she used data from classroom observations to track their progress in implementing a behavior management system; both showed marked improvement.

From left to right: Kristen O'Brien; Margaret Weiss; and Kelley S. Regan. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

“Beginning teachers enter one of the few professions where they are expected to perform at the same level as experienced veterans from the very start,” Patel said. “ECoaching provides essential support for novice teachers, helping them refine their instructional practices and positively influence student achievement. And it has consistently proven to be a powerful method for enhancing teacher efficacy.”

And that efficacy could be a key to keeping teachers in the classrooms. As school districts continue to grapple with teacher retention, self-efficacy and perseverance are, according to associate professor Pam Baker and co-PI, key ways to improve retention rates.

For Susan Jennings, MEd ‘23, a learning disabilities teacher at Herndon High School, that sense of confidence and self-efficacy were two of the greatest outcomes of her internship experience. When asked what she recalls as being the most helpful part of the internship, it wasn’t the technology itself, but how Patel, her internship supervisor, utilized it to give Jennings the tools she needed to succeed.

“I continue to use many of the strategies Ms. Patel shared for scaffolding lessons for learners with disabilities in my classroom,” she said, “including the lesson planning template for more engaging learner-centered lessons.”

At the end of the day, DCOP demonstrates that it’s not just about the technology: it’s the human on the other side providing the support and investment in growth that helps these teachers succeed.

“Our coaches prepare our interns to be self-reflective in developing strategies for growth and overcoming challenges,” said Regan. “It equips them to be successful when that coach is no longer in their ear.”

Discover more through the MEd in Special Education

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Students program computers to interpret sign language

Melanie Balog — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 20:11:08 +0000

Students program computers to interpret sign language Melanie Balog Mon, 08/12/2019 - 16:11

With a twist or shake of your wrist, your smartphone can interpret motion to take a picture, turn on a light, and more. Last year, ��AV computer science professors Parth Pathak and Huzefa Rangwala were brainstorming how similar technology could help society in even greater ways. Their idea? To automatically translate sign language into text or speech.

“There are some products that can do gesture recognition, but they’re very preliminary. And it’s very different from ASL [American Sign Language], which is not just a few gestures—it’s thousands of words,” said Pathak, principal investigator on the Summer Team Impact Project funded by Mason’s Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research (OSCAR).

This summer, nine Mason undergraduates joined in the research that could help make the technology a reality.

Frederick Olson (from left), Sai Gurrapu and Dom Huh are part of a summer research project on automatic multimodal sign language recognition. Photo by Lathan Goumas/Office of Communications and Marketing.

“The goal would be to deliver a readable message to a device so that it’s bridging the gap between ASL users and non-users,” said therapeutic recreation senior Riley Wilkerson, “an easier, more effective, and more personal way of communicating.”

Riley Wilkerson signs for a radar sensor as part of a summer research project on automatic multimodal sign language recognition. Photo by Lathan Goumas/Office of Communications and Marketing.

Three teams of students are experimenting with different sensors: a wireless radar, a camera, and an inertial measurement unit (a wearable motion sensor used in smartphones and Fitbits). Each sensor offers certain opportunities, but also challenges including privacy and ease of use, said Pathak, who is guiding the students on the project along with Mason computer science professor Jana Kosecka and Mason’s Helen A. Kellar Institute for Human disabilities director Linda Mason, and graduate student Panneer Selvam Santhalingham.

On each team, a student familiar with ASL signs in front of a sensor that collects data about the motion or the environment. Computer science and engineering students refine the data to find patterns and write machine learning algorithms—code that allows them to interpret the computer’s recognition of the signs.

So far, the undergraduates have “taught” their machines to recognize about 20 signs with accuracy rates ranging from 70-97 percent. The fluctuations in accuracy are due to the machine learning process, said senior computer science major Yuanqi Du.

Diverse data helps the computer recognize the signs with increased accuracy, Du said. In initial trials with one student, accuracy rates were higher. When a new ASL user was introduced, the accuracy diminished, Du said. Once the new ASL user’s data was included in the algorithms, accuracy rates rose again.

Ariana Havens wears cell phones as she signs as part of a summer research project on automatic multimodal sign language recognition. Photo by Lathan Goumas.

As the multi-year project continues, Pathak said the team plans to increase the number of signs the computer can recognize using data from many diverse users. They will also scale it to interpret full sentences and pick up other gestures used in ASL such as body tilts and micro expressions like raising an eyebrow, he said.

“Being able to communicate instantly would hopefully remove issues [the ASL community experiences],” said Frederick Olson, a senior IT major who said both his parents are deaf. That includes being able to ask a question at a store, socializing, communicating with doctors easily during appointments, or being able to land better job opportunities. The technology could be life-changing, he said.

It could also be applied beyond the deaf community, the students said, helping people with autism or developmental and learning disabilities for whom communicating using spoken words is challenging, Wilkerson said.

“It could be applicable to other industries and disciplines in the future [that will work with similar technology], too,” said junior computer science major Sai Gurrapu.

And, the project pushes student learning to the next level, Pathak said.

“They’re not given a fixed task here—they’re given a problem and they have to find a solution,” Pathak said.

“This project is one of a variety of opportunities [Mason] has presented to me that goes beyond just taking 15 credits each semester,” Wilkerson said. “You can only learn so much in a classroom—you have to apply it.”

Seniors Yuanqi (from left), Nguyen Dang and Riley Wilkerson are part of a summer research project on automatic multimodal sign language recognition. Photo by Lathan Goumas/Office of Communications and Marketing.

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Office of Student Scholarship Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR)

Helen A. Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities

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Helen A. Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities

Real-time feedback is part of a holistic approach to helping new teachers succeed

Discover more through the MEd in Special Education

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Students program computers to interpret sign language