NSF grant funds research for autism curriculum

Abdu Arslanyilmaz, associate professor of Computer Science, Information and Engineering Technology at Youngstown State University, has received a $286,526 research and development grant from the National Science Foundation.

The grant funds the design, development and testing of an accessible computing curriculum for students with autism spectrum disorders. Margaret Briley, assistant professor of Teacher Education at YSU, is the co-principal investigator, with Potential Development and the Rich Center for Autism as collaborators.

The project is for two years, with a potential of an additional three-year second phase of a larger scale project within the same NSF program. The ultimate purpose is to provide a publicly accessible computing curriculum repository to teach computational thinking to students with ASD.