[BlindMath] FW: Blind and low-vision subscribers to BlindMath list needed for research study on informal learning cultures

Wed Jan 29 00:30:18 UTC 2020

As you know, we receive occasional requests for research participants, but we now have a process that provides a degree of comfort level that a request is what it says it is.  I’ve been asked to post the request below here by Lou Ann Blake from our national office.  Please do not reply to the entire list, but direct your communications to JooYoung Seo, whose contact information appears several times in the message below.

The below research participant solicitation is being provided for informational purposes only. The National Federation of the Blind has no involvement in this research, but we believe that it may contribute to our research mission.

Dear NFB members,

I am JooYoung Seo, a Ph.D. candidate in Learning, Design, and Technology program at the Pennsylvania State University.

As a blind person myself and one of the NFB members involved in STEM disciplines, I wanted to contribute to STEM accessibility for the blind through my dissertation research.

I am looking for 5 to 10 individuals who can share their learning experiences of STEM subjects as being blind.

The individuals will be online-interviewed about 30 minutes, and they will be entered into a raffle for a $25 Amazon gift card.

Eligible participants for the online interview are those:

* self-identifying themselves as an individual who is blind or visually impaired;

* age 18 or older;

* having any learning experiences with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines;

* and having a membership of any of the following NFB mailing lists:

NFB-Science; NFBCS; Artists-Making-Art; BlindMath.

If you are interested in participating, or have a question, please contact JooYoung Seo (jooyoung at psu.edu<mailto:jooyoung at psu.edu>). Please pass on this information to other suitable candidates who you think may be interested.

More detailed information about this online interview and my dissertation study is as follows:

==============

Invitation to Participate in Research on Learning Cultures of Blind Individuals Pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

(STEM) Disciplines

A research team comprising blind and sighted scholars at the Pennsylvania State University is conducting data-science research on online interactions and informal learning patterns of blind people interested in STEM-related subjects. In this context, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and this is used for an overarching acronym to represent any relevant fields, including making, hacking, tinkering, designing, software/hardware programming, science, technology, engineering, math, physics, biology.

Since all the email communications of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) mailing lists have been publicly archived online at https://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nfbnet.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo&data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce1e6d3b21f194e7d658708d7a4349be2%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637158418166449686&sdata=ANZdgyguRgycvZ5N8ZOyEOx6fVwqf16UP%2BHj0jH2dlM%3D&reserved=0>, we would like to employ this valuable textual data created by the list members to discover new knowledge about how blind people pursuing STEM disciplines learn from and interact with each other.

More specifically, this research will include a large corpus of text data produced by the members of the following NFB mailing lists which can be retrieved from the publicly downloadable archives:

* NFB-Science: http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfb-science_nfbnet.org/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnfbnet.org%2Fpipermail%2Fnfb-science_nfbnet.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce1e6d3b21f194e7d658708d7a4349be2%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637158418166459691&sdata=%2B2NWjCcdl6Q1A81Kv9mE%2Fdwlgueq62XiTy1Vsp8RITQ%3D&reserved=0>

* NFBCS: http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnfbnet.org%2Fpipermail%2Fnfbcs_nfbnet.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce1e6d3b21f194e7d658708d7a4349be2%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637158418166469702&sdata=9vQHt1q2j6gPQ4CakQvepu60zYEVKpaaV2Bf9dA%2Bmow%3D&reserved=0>

* Artists-Making-Art: http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/artists-making-art_nfbnet.org/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnfbnet.org%2Fpipermail%2Fartists-making-art_nfbnet.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce1e6d3b21f194e7d658708d7a4349be2%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637158418166479707&sdata=KPm6H1yGTWQc4A%2FMurwKRmVC36yeENOldmBU52XKPwI%3D&reserved=0>

BlindMath: http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindmath_nfbnet.org/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnfbnet.org%2Fpipermail%2Fblindmath_nfbnet.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce1e6d3b21f194e7d658708d7a4349be2%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637158418166489712&sdata=MF%2FgIbuWVtEjWbn5lqQgU04yw6g930fw3hfJmSKUOlM%3D&reserved=0>

The expected value of this study is that we will get a better sense of the following topics from a evidence-driven data science perspective, which will in turn scientifically highlight where we are and what we need in terms of supporting blind STEM learners:

* The common STEM issues of blind learners that provoke discussion.

* The patterns of interaction between blind mentors and mentees in the STEM-related mailing lists.

* The strategies that are proposed or utilized by blind individuals pursuing STEM disciplines in the mailing lists.

As of May 21, 2019, use of this text corpus in the public domain is determined as a non-human subject research category by the Office for Research Protections at the Pennsylvania State University: Study #00012478.

Aggregated text-mining and exploratory data science approaches will be used to analyze shared cultural patterns of these mailing list archives after systematically removing personal information such as names, email addresses, and email signature lines, which means researchers will make sure not to disclose any of your personal information without your permission. However, in any event you still feel uncomfortable with some of your created text data being included in this research process, please feel free to contact JooYoung Seo, the principal investigator of this study, at jooyoung at psu.edu<mailto:jooyoung at psu.edu> to ask for the removal of your data from the analysis and reporting procedures.

While all the email exchanges will remain anonymous, the researchers would like to invite some members of the listservs to an online interview to share their learning experiences of STEM subjects as being blind. This will allow researchers to rigorously validate the computational results captured through the large-scale text archives with more pronounced qualitative findings from the individuals.

Eligible participants for the online interview are those:

* self-identifying themselves as an individual who is blind or visually impaired;

* age 18 or older;

* having any learning experiences with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines;

* and having a membership of any of the NFB mailing lists specified above (i.e., NFB-Science; NFBCS; Artists-Making-Art; BlindMath).

If you are interested in participating, or have a question, please contact the Principal Investigator of this study, JooYoung Seo (email:

jooyoung at psu.edu<mailto:jooyoung at psu.edu>). Please pass on this information to other suitable candidates who you think may be interested.

The researchers of this study will share any results that have benefitted from the NFB mailing lists with the target communities via email as the study progresses.

We appreciate the collective knowledge of the NFB and hope that our research can bring back meaningful results to the community in learning STEM subjects as being blind.

Sincerely,

JooYoung Seo (PI) and Dr. Gabriela T. Richard (co-PI) JooYoung Seo, Ph.D. Candidate Learning, Design, and Technology The Pennsylvania State University

Email: jooyoung at psu.edu<mailto:jooyoung at psu.edu>

Phone: (814)-777-5825