How Students in India Are Designing for Inclusivity and Accessibility – Digital Promise

How Students in India Are Designing for Inclusivity and Accessibility

Students in India work on an art project using markers

December 21, 2022 | By

Key Points

  • The Sustainable Development Goals provide a framework for students to explore and learn about global and local challenges.
  • Stakeholder interviews can help students to develop a deeper understanding of the different perspectives and issues related to their chosen topic or challenge.
  • Educators should look for opportunities where students can harness technology to be innovators, learners, and change makers.
In 2021, Digital Promise and Ciena launched the Ciena Solutions Challenge, a global design challenge inviting middle and high school students to design solutions that address the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals within their communities. This blog post is part of a series in which educators from around the world share their experiences facilitating the Ciena Solutions Challenge with students. Featured below are lessons from educator Poonam Gupta who facilitated the Yugma student project team at City Pride School in Pune, India.

Coming Up with the Big Idea: Reducing Inequalities

Our students started their Ciena Solutions Challenge journey by brainstorming topics related to the Sustainable Development Goals in order to come up with our big idea: reducing inequalities. From here, the group decided to work on making a difference in the lives of children with special needs. We reached out to the management team at ZEP Rehabilitation Centre, a school dedicated to students with special needs, located approximately 5 kilometers from our school, and they readily agreed to collaborate.

Investigating the Challenge

To understand the various challenges their ZEP Rehabilitation Centre peers face, our students conducted extensive interviews and surveys with stakeholders at ZEP Rehabilitation Centre, such as teachers, parents, doctors, and counselors. They learned that children with disabilities face stigma and are often rejected by society and parents. In addition, they discovered that there are few learning tools available in Marathi, the vernacular language. Parents of students with special needs are often worried about their future and ability to earn a livelihood. Further, society gives “lip sympathy,” but at the same time, keeps these students at arm’s length.

Designing a Focused Action Plan

Group of students and teacher at a table surrounded by artwork.

City Pride School and ZEP students gather for joint art activities.

Considering our limited resources, we developed a focused action plan:

    • Host joint activities – Our school has a large infrastructure and playground with specialized teachers for various skills. We invited ZEP students to our school twice a week for joint games with other school children. This developed a sense of familiarity among students. Teachers from art, music, sport, and computer also joined in identifying and honing students’ skills.
    • Develop an app – Develop an app in Marathi, Hindi, and English to develop children’s motor sensory and cognitive domains and to cater to specific needs of different types and levels of disabilities.
    • Design a website – Design a website to connect parents with therapists via a direct hotline, FAQs, and a directory of doctors.
Students sitting at the edge of a stage, with “Yugma: We are in for a new beginning” written above them.

YUGMA student project team.

Our materialistic society has made us individualistic. The art of sharing and giving has been the ultimate aim of my life. Through their involvement in the Yugma project, our student team at City Pride School developed a stronger interest and commitment to working in partnership to improve the lives of students with disabilities.

Students on a playground.

City Pride School students host their ZEP peers on their playground.

As for me, I knew the dictionary meaning of the word “empathy,” but this journey has resulted in real soul searching. Technology has to be harnessed for the good of humankind and I hope that in the future, more people will continue to find ways to use it for positive social impact. Our history and mythology is full of stories about love and compassion and I feel that our small baby step has made our own project team’s lives more meaningful and fulfilling.

Challenge Based Learning Tips

  • One key to a successful project is the cohesiveness of the team. At times, team members may have conflicts that can be resolved by motivating them to focus on project goals and objectives.
  • Each student possesses unique talents and interests. Encourage teams to divide responsibilities based on their skills and interests. For example, one person might be good in software, while another is a strategic thinker or a motivator who can be the unofficial team leader. Or, someone might have skills in designing and conducting surveys, while another who is more extroverted might enjoy conducting face-to-face interviews—both of which can bring out deeper insights and future courses of action.
  • Help students frame questions that get at root causes. In the Engage and Investigate phases of Challenge Based Learning, questions should be framed so that the team can understand the root cause of the problem. The Ciena Solutions Challenge Resource Library has a good repository of tools for both teachers and students.
  • Consider ways for students to have early wins. The moment that the ZEP children visited our school and started playing, we could sense that we had hit the nail on the head. Our team members got charged up after seeing this initial success.
 Students holding up papers with artwork.

Students present their artwork.

Learn more on the Ciena Solutions Challenge Website

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