Kellar Institute for Human DisAbilities (KIHd) - College of Education and Human Development - George Mason University
About KIHd
About Us

The Kellar Institute for Human DisAbilities (KIHd) is an interdisciplinary campus-based organization focusing on improving the lives and productivity of children and adults with disabilities. KIHd combines the resources of the university with local, state, regional, national, public, and private sector agencies and organizations to develop products, services, and programs for persons with disabilities.

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Student using assistive technology keyboard
Licensure, Certificates & Training Grants

The Kellar Institute for Human DisAbilities (KIHd) collaborates with a consortium of Virginia universities to offer training/licensure options for teachers of students with visual impairments and severe disabilities. Distance education makes the programs more accessible and maximizes the number of individuals who can receive the training.

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students, parents, professionals attending state of the art conference
VDOE Grants

With the support from Virgina Department of Education KIHd serves teachers, parents, therapists, and community service providers by providing a variety of continuing learning experiences via annual workshops, conferences, and project activities. In many cases, KIHd uses distance education to provide teacher training and professional development across the state.

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Project We Got It
Research

The Kellar Institute for Human DisAbilities (KIHd) continues to build and support numerous educational research projects that vary across disciplines spearheaded by the Mason faculty members. Our goal is to increase evidence based instructional and behavioral strategies to improve academic outcomes for all students with disabilities.

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Leadership Grants
DOCTORAL AND MASTERS STUDENTS

The Kellar Institute for Human DisAbilities (KIHd) doctoral and masters students conduct cutting edge research at George Mason University that is aimed to serve persons with disabilities and their families.

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About ACTIV Project

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ADAPTED CAPTIONS THROUGH INTERACTIVE VIDEO (ACTIV) PROJECT

examples of video screens with different adaptations

ACTIV project is funded through the Phase I Steppingstones of Technology Innovation for Students with Disabilities grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (84.327A) titled " Development and Usability Testing of Adapted and Interactive Video Interventions for Students with Intellectual Disabilities" in the amount of $400,000 over two years.

Project Purpose: ACTIV project is aimed to develop, refine, and test the feasibility of an innovative technology-based approach enforcing the principles of universal design for learning that enables access and participation of students with various disabilities in appropriate challenging academic curriculum. This technology will allow enhancing existing content-based videos in any subject area with adapted and interactive features such as regular text, highlighted text, and/or picture-symbol captioning; verbal and visual cuing; interactive hyperlinks in order to search the video for answers; and built-in testing activities in various formats (see screen shots below).

Project Phases: Iterative developmental process of the innovative video-based prototype tool for middle and high school students with intellectual disabilities enhanced with formative evaluation and feasibility testing will include the following 5 steps:

steps of the project

Anticipated Outcomes: The project will ultimately result in universally designed technology-based instructional materials that will support improvements in academic outcomes of students identified with intellectual disabilities. Anticipated outcomes include: (1) key features for the adapted and interactive videos having potential to improve educational results of students with intellectual disabilities; (2) the iterative product development process as reflected in the Alpha and Beta prototypes, as well as the final technology innovation; (3) utilization of original and adapted interactive videos across subject areas by middle and high school students with intellectual disabilities; (4) the results of expert panel review and usability testing incorporating single-subject and qualitative data; (5) completion of the final technology-based product for video enhancement; (6) published reports and national, state, and local presentations on the process and product of the proposed development project; and (7) recommendations for further development and research of the effectiveness of the innovative technology-based approach.

For more information please contact Anna Evmenova aevmenov@gmu.edu