Category Archives: Technology

SJSU Business Grad Supports Accessible Software at Google

Jyotsna Kaki, '06 Management Information Systems, works as an accessibility software testing engineer at Google.

Jyotsna Kaki, ’06 Management Information Systems, works as an accessibility software testing engineer at Google.

When Jyotsna Kaki, ’06 Management Information Systems (MIS), was a student at San Jose State in the Lucas College and Graduate School of Business, she offered to help a classmate in need when the other student fractured a wrist and was unable to take notes. At the time, Kaki discovered the Disability Resource Center (DRC), now known as the Accessible Education Center, where staff members provided her guidance on how to best support her peer.

More than a decade later, Kaki, who became blind while she was a student at SJSU, is still helping others as a software accessibility test engineer for Google. She oversees a central accessibility team of test engineers and trains other Google employees to conduct accessibility testing. Her story was recently featured on CNN Money, with a video and article.

Kaki became blind a semester after she discovered the DRC while helping her classmate. In fall 2004, she woke one morning with blurriness in her right eye. She had been diagnosed with a benign, slow-growing brain tumor as a child. The tumor had grown into the optic nerve and she underwent surgery to regain her sight. Instead, her optic nerve was damaged during the surgery and she was left with a permanent visual impairment.

“It was unexpected,” she said. “I don’t remember much from the month after I found out.”

But her mother tells her less than 10 minutes after discovering she was blind, Kaki called her brother to ask him to help her get back on campus. Within a month, she was back at San Jose State.

When she returned to campus, she felt isolated from her peers who did not interact with her as they had before she lost her vision. Her professors tried to be accommodating, but sometimes did not know how to help her. She turned to the DRC for support. They provided training on how to use screen reading technology, helped her get accessible textbooks and she learned Braille to get through the rest of her coursework.

“Everything pretty much started there (in the DRC),” Kaki said. “Most professors were helpful, but they didn’t have the necessary information.”

Kaki completed her degree two years after she lost her vision with a 3.8 GPA, higher than her GPA before her impairment. After graduation, her brother passed her resume to a friend who worked at Google without telling her. She thought a professor might have sent her resume in, but later discovered it was her brother. When she was invited in for an interview, she did not think she would get the job. They offered her a position and she has since taken on the role of leading a team of engineers. In the last decade, she said she has seen the focus on accessibility increase at Google and she is proud to be part of the efforts.

“It’s been really great because at the end of every day, I can go to sleep satisfied that what I am doing is going to help someone,” she said. “I have been lucky to help other people get assistance and help make products successful. It’s been a great experience and I’ve learned a lot.”

 

San Jose State receives $2M for Student Success

San Jose State University is one of a dozen Bay Area institutions to receive funding from the Koret Foundation as part of a multi-year $50 million initiative to support higher education.

SJSU will receive $2 million from the Koret Foundation to support student success, with University Advancement’s Tower Foundation administering the gift. The influx of funding comes on the heels of the recently released SJSU’s Four Pillars of Student Success: College Readiness, Advising, Student Engagement and Clearing Bottlenecks plan. The data-driven campus-wide student success strategy has one goal: to significantly increase retention and graduation rates for all students while improving the quality of their educational experience.

The $2 million has been earmarked to support college readiness, advising and student engagement at San Jose State. It will be used to create a new student information analytics system that will improve advising and to support the Spartan Scholars Program, a newly launched summer bridge program that is aimed at increasing retention and graduation of underrepresented and first-generation students.

SJSU’s Four Pillars plan was created by Provost Andy Feinstein and Vice President for Student Affairs Reggie Blaylock, with input from multiple campus stakeholders, including students. The plan was highlighted in a recent NPR story in which Feinstein shared that the university is offering up to 500 additional course sections to help students make progress toward degree (with funding from the university’s general fund.)

“They (SJSU students) are the inspiration that keeps me going and get me up in the morning,” he said, during the NPR interview.

According to its press release, Koret believes that education not only enables individual success and mobility, but also helps build a vibrant Bay Area. The initiative addresses a number of high priority needs at each institution, including capital, research, scholarships, technology, and recruiting, advising, and retention programs for low-income, first-generation students.

“The Koret Foundation is proud to fund this initiative that builds on and expands our longstanding commitment to these important Bay Area academic institutions,” said Michael Boskin, President of the Koret Foundation. “This program is designed to be a catalyst for new approaches to optimize student success, improve completion rates, and bolster career advancement opportunities, particularly among underserved populations.”

Read the full press release and view an outline of the initiatives at all of the higher education institutions partnering with Koret online.

Based in San Francisco, the Koret Foundation supports civic, cultural, and educational organizations that promote a vibrant and distinctive Bay Area. Koret focuses its giving in two major areas: strengthening Bay Area anchor institutions and fostering Jewish connection and identity. Since its founding in 1979, Koret has invested $500 million to contribute to a higher quality of civic and Jewish community life. For more information, visit http://www.koretfoundation.org/

Next Generation Classrooms Offer Unique Teaching Opportunities

San Jose State professors who are interested in using new technology in a “next generation” classroom on campus gathered on May 17 to hear from colleagues who have already implemented innovative teaching methods in their courses.

During the workshop, Academic Technology and ITS staff members, and faculty members discussed the technology usage landscape, connectedness, the digital divide and building learning pathways.

Jennifer Redd, director of eCampus for Academic Technology, shared some statistics from an Educause survey that found 92 percent of college students own a smartphone while 91 percent own a laptop, making technology accessible in most classrooms. The survey found that three in five instructors use technology during class and encourage the use of collaborative tools.

Faculty members shared some of the ways they have used collaborative tools in the classroom, including telepresence, lecture capture and learning management systems.

San Jose State currently has seven “next generation” classrooms that include audio, visual and lecture capture equipment. The classrooms allow faculty members and students to interact with others remotely, record sessions to view online later and to collaborate through learning management systems such as Canvas. Mobile telepresence units, Wifi and Smartboards allow some of the same tools to be used in other classrooms on campus.

Academic Technology staff members are available to support faculty who are interested in implementing teaching techniques that use technology to enhance student engagement and learning in their classrooms.

See a schedule of upcoming workshops online.

May 2016 Newsletter: Grant Fosters STEM Course Redesign

SJSU professors are redesigning lower division math and physics classes that are requirements for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors.

SJSU professors are redesigning lower division math and physics classes that are requirements for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors.

For the next four years, several faculty members in the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering and the College of Science will be working to transform gateway science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses with a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. San Jose State University is one of 18 colleges and universities in the nation to receive a 2015 First in the World grant.

SJSU faculty members will work with CSU Los Angeles and Cal Poly Pomona representatives on creating flipped classroom materials that will be piloted at all three campuses. At San Jose State, Provost Andy Feinstein and Associate Professor Laura Sullivan-Green, from civil and environmental engineering, are co-directors on the grant. The first courses that will be updated are Math 30 (calculus I) and Phys 50 (physics I). The classes are a requirement for many STEM majors and a prerequisite for upper division work. The SJSU team plans to implement the flipped classroom model in fall 2016. Flipped courses often include richer and more readily accessible online supplemental study materials; more elaborate and interactive homework and self-check instructional materials; and more engaging in-class teaching strategies.

“We all know that innovation can take many forms and as a key part of the Administration’s goal to promote college access and affordability, the First in the World program aims to support a wide range of innovation to improve student success,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a press release. “We are pleased to support these educational leaders who are driving exciting innovations to achieve those goals.”

As part of SJSU’s Four Pillars of Student Success, university leaders are focused on clearing course bottlenecks. Surveys of students revealed that a major challenge to success is course bottlenecks – impasses where they cannot enroll in a course they need to make progress toward their degrees, or when they cannot successfully complete a course and move forward. The university will offer up to 500 additional course sections in 2016-17 to clear bottlenecks. The CSU Chancellor’s Office Proven Course Redesign and Promising Practices grants along with the First in the World grant are targeted at improving successful completion of general education courses that are needed for students to move on to upper division work.

“We are hosting faculty and campus coordinators from our two partner campuses the first weekend in June to facilitate community-building and course material development,” said Sullivan-Green, noting that 30 faculty members and administrators are involved between the three campuses in the First in the World Grant.

April Newsletter: Students Engage Beyond Borders in ‘COIL’ Classes

Photo courtesy of Jason Laker Connie L. Lurie College of Education students engage with peers from Allama Iqbal Open University in Pakistan via online video conference.

Photo courtesy of Jason Laker
Connie L. Lurie College of Education students engage with peers from Allama Iqbal Open University in Pakistan via online video conference.

In Xochilt Garcia’s Gender and the Male Student course, she and her peers connected via video conference to students in Pakistan for almost every class session.

“Our first session was a bit awkward at first due to both sides being timid about standing in front of a screen,” she said. “However, as a discussion was initiated, everyone on both sides of the world started to become engaged and talkative.”

Garcia’s course was taught by Dr. Jason Laker using a technique called Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL).

“Out of my six years in higher education, never have I had such a learning experience where we discussed issues such as race, gender, religion, and discrimination with people that we oftentimes define as different,” she said. “Within American society, we are at times trained to learn about cultures through comparison and differences. However through COIL, I learned to look at similarities in humans regardless of all the (identities) we may identify with.”

Garcia’s class connected with students at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) in Pakistan, where SJSU was engaged in a three-year U.S. State Department grant, the Pakistani Distance Education Enhancement Program overseen by Mark Adams. The grant ended in January 2016, but COIL collaborations continue.

“It was interesting to bridge the gap between two different cultures – both classrooms were not too different,” said Muhammad Ramzan, a Pakistani student, after engaging in a Skype conference with SJSU students. “It was the best use of technology…I (felt like) we were all sitting together and discussing with each other.”

Laker said as the counseling education program serves many working students and offers courses in the evening, it worked well to schedule Skype sessions with students in Islamabad, where it was early morning during his nighttime class sessions.

“I teach graduate courses for students preparing to become school counselors or college student affairs practitioners,” Laker said, noting the importance of developing multicultural skills. “One of the particularly poignant aspects from my perspective is the number of first-generation students on both sides. Students on both sides said they never thought they would ever have an opportunity to talk with peers in other countries.”

Minna Holopainen, a professor of communication studies, has been integral in supporting COIL. She presented on it at the IT Services Innovation and Collaboration Expo in October 2015. She has worked with other faculty on campus including Bettina Brockmann, a lecturer whose class worked on a water project through COIL, and Assistant Professor Tabitha Hart, who is currently using the technique in her communication studies classes.

For two semesters, Hart has had her students conduct a written exchange with students from AIOU. She and a partner teacher in Pakistan select a writing prompt for the students. The SJSU students have a chance to read and respond to the prompts from the Pakistani students, who do the same with the SJSU write ups. Last year, the students wrote about special education.

“The way the students had experienced special education, what it meant and how they observed it was quite different,” Hart said, noting that the Pakistani students wrote about physical disabilities while SJSU students also mentioned less visible disabilities such as cognitive or emotional issues. “What was interesting is that they did see similarities and they saw differences as well.”

In some of her classes, Hart also has her students engage in a live online meeting with students from Germany, Finland and Great Britain. The students learn how to set up an online meeting that includes audio and video with someone overseas and they use the interviews to learn about different cultures.

“There are students who have had an international experience – they or their family or extended family have traveled or moved from another country – but the majority of students have never had to do something quite like this,” Hart said. “We talk about international and globalization culture – it is a value at SJSU. The tough question is how are we going to actually do that and this is a very direct way to do it.”