2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Research for the Recognition and the Self -Utilization of Tactile Graphic Media in Higher Education by the Blind
| Project/Area Number |
12680232
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Educational technology
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| Research Institution | Tsukuba College of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
KATOH Hiroshi Tsukuba College of Technology, Department of General Education, Associate Professor, 視覚部・一般教育等, 助教授 (50177466)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
MINAGAWA Hiroki Tsukuba College of Technology, Department of Information Science and Electronics, Associate Professor, 電子情報学科・情報工学専攻, 助教授 (00273285)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2000 – 2001
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| Keywords | visual impairement / higher education / tactile graphics / educational media / blind / externalized reasoning / literacy of graphics / university admission |
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| Research Abstract |
We observed how blind people read information which has been configured into tactile graphics. In order to recognize mapped ideas in tactile forms, we found that blind people need two types of competence. There are many graphics in modern educational media. Especially for the higher education, the complexities and difficulties of academic concepts depicted in figures are very high in the level. There are no studies of how blind students in universities use these graphic resources for studying. The National Center Test, the common university entrance examinations for national and private universities in Japan, include many pictures and these pictures are near higher education level. Graphics in tests are transformed into tactile graphics or other alternatives for blind applicants. We observed blind students' answering behavior of examination questions with tactile graphics and found that they could read many types of graphics. They understood pattern diagrams, maps ancfspictures easily, but they failed to answer questions because of lack of knowledge about the subject. They need more time to recognize statistical figures, especially for unlearned styles of graphics. Blind students are required to have at least two types of literacy for reading graphs in educational media. One is knowledge about the object of various types of graphics for academic subjects and the other is haptic pattern recognition. These results suggest that teaching how to retrieve information is as crucial as figural recognition training in education with tactile figures for the blind.
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