Empowering Young People with Disability through STEM and Online

EducationSang-Mook Lee

Seoul National Universitysmlee@snu.ac.kr

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Outline• A brief history of myself• Fame brings power to change things• “Computer is god's gift to people with

disability”• Quality of Life Technology Initiative• Computational Sciences as path to

STEM• Open Online Education (e.g., MOOC)

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During geological field trip in California, 2006

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Completely Paralyzed Neck Down

Thanks God I'm a college pro-fessor

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I have no recollection of that day. Was it really an accident?

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They did not think that I would speak again.

No depression or psychological prob-lem:

Near-death experience or damage to the brain?

A quick return back to the society thru Occu-pational Therapy and Assistive Technology

Special input device

Speech recognition

Modified vehicle

“Computer is god’s gift to disabled people.”“The gap between people is reduced in cyber-space.”

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Stephen Hawking of Korea andchance to do something

Ministry of Knowledge Economyand

Quality of Life Technology

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12000

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

PIB

real

per

cap

ita (2

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Sud Corea

BrazilDiferença em resultadodevido a crescimento notrabalho e no capitalna Coréia

Diferença em resultado devido a crescimento TFP ou a acúmulode conhecimentona Coréia

GDP per Capita: Brazil versus Korea

Source: FRA Report

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At the center of Knowledge Economy is Information and Communication Technology

The same technology we use daily can be used to solve important problems facing our society such as inclusion and diversity.

Three Major Difficulties of People with Disability • Economic hardship • Inclusion in society • Strain in family relationship

Independent LivingAssistive Technology & Education Leading to Job

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Quality of Life Technology Initiative launched by the government in 2010

Quality of Life TechnologyResearch & Development

- Accessible vehicles- Personalized cellphones & software- Exercise & health monitoring devices- Exoskeleton robots- Korean speech recognitions & AACs

Infrastructure & Human Res. Development- UX/UI, infrastructural R&D- Advanced ICT training- Precollege activities, mentoring- Undergrad program in Computational Sci-

ences- Grad prog in Rehabilitation Science & Tech-

nology

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Controlling IPTV with sip-and-puff mouse

Using touch screen device with sip-and-puff mouse

Quality of Life TechnologyResearch & Development

- Accessible vehicles- Personalized cellphones & software- Exercise & health monitoring devices- Exoskeleton robots- Korean speech recognitions & AACs

Infrastructure & Human Res. Development- UX/UI, infrastructural R&D- Advanced ICT training- Precollege activities, mentoring- Undergrad program in Computational

Sciences- Grad prog in Rehabilitation Science & Tech-

nology

What comes to your mind when I say

Computational Sciences?

Science is all about observation and exper-iment. But some things are impractical to observe or conduct direct measurement. In such case, we use computer to simulate natural phenomena.

Weather, Climate Finance, EconomySocial

Movie, Cultural Life Sciences

Air, SpaceEnvironment

Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Program in Computational Sciences

• Numerical Analysis• Data Science (Big Data, Bioinformatics)• Graphics & Visualization

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At Seoul National University

• Currently 30 students (5 with disability)• 2% quota in elite science and fine art high schools in

Metropolitan Seoul (Admission of 30 students with disability every year)

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MOOC

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Online Education

• For nondisabled people, it’s effectiveness

can be debated and is an option• For people with disability, it can some-

times be the only solution

• Assumptions: – Online education is a headache for established

universities– 99% of Koreans are disabled when it comes to

listening English lectures (language barrier)

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Disability is diverse so there cannot be one-size-fits-all solu-

tion.

But two important questions:

• How do you teach a blind person math?superb memory and logical

• How do you teach a deaf person English?

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Equations are two-dimensionalDynamic webpages updating all the time

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LaTex? MathML?

You have to start training at an early age.

dydx

'( )f x

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QoLTx: New accessible so-lution

• Goal: To provide foundational courses for student with disability across the border

• Starting with edX platform (Ruby and

Python) and improving its accessibility• Making courses at precollege, freshman

and sophomore levels (science, engineer-ing and math)

• Multilingual (Korean, English and Arabic)• Creating new jobs for people with disabil-

ity• Off-line voluntary services (academic

Peace Corps) to developing countries

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To make it global, we have to follow international standards and develop new technology.

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My Vision

By making online education accessible and multilingual, we might be able to help not only people with disability but also women in developing countries.

40 days across US – Now or Never

But it took only 12 days to come back.

Thanks for your attention

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