BASAER team: The first arabic robot team for building the capacities of visually impaired students to build and program robots

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether visually impaired students can build educational robots and program them if they receiveadapted materials and instructions with guided instruction from a well-trainededucators in the fields of inclusive STEM Classrooms. Discussion of the technologiesand our experimental approach is presented in this paper and validatedthrough the continued successful effort with visually impaired students for twoyears of the program and specialists in the field of visual impairment andSTEAM, we also validated our approach by performing experimental classes forstudents with different visual impairments and ages. The results indicated thatthe approach used by BASAER team was successful in enabling the blind andvisually impaired student to build and program educational robots and to participateeffectively in national and international STEAM programs and competitions,with some limitations and Challenges encountered and explored during thisresearch. The results from this study will be used to suggest a fully adapted systemto support full inclusion for blind and visually impaired students in educationalrobots in STEAM context and to promote the adoption of this study andsimilar studies toward Inclusive STEM Classrooms.