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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What ACTIV Can Do

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ACTIV 1.0 can be used to enhance existing videos with such features as:

  • 4 types of closed captioning (text only captions, highlighted text captions, picture symbols text captions, picture symbols highlighted text captions)
  • Visual cuing
  • Text-to-speech
  • Interactive multiple-choice quizzes allowing searching the video for answers
  • Data collection capabilities

So what can ACTIV 1.0 do?

1. Upload any existing video (.wmv; .avi) in the user or design view

2. Automatically create video transcript by converting speech to text and adding time stamps to each word in the video (providing regular captions)

3. Edit text in the transcript (right in the transcript window or through the advanced screen), while maintaining time stamps (improving accuracy or creating key word captions)

4. Automatically highlight each word in the text-based captions as it is spoken out (can turn this feature on/off).

5. Automatically add picture symbols from Symbolstix to each word in the captions (can turn this feature on/off)

6. Add graphics to the video (as the overlay) to focus user's attention on important stimuli.

7. Mute the video and use text-to-speech feature (to reduce the difficulty level of narration).

8. Allow creating multiple-choice quizzes to test user's comprehension of the video content.

9. Allow tagging each question to the video, so that the user can preview/watch a segment containing the correct answer before or after answering each question.

10. Read out loud each question and answer choice to the student.

11. Collect and report mouse clicks data.