HAWK/KW: An Online System for Studying Dyslexic Children’s Reading, Writing, and Programming

Abstract

This thesis describes the design and use of an online system of computerized lessons built to teach reading and writing to students with learning disabilities as part of a large research project on specific learning disabilities in written language. The system comprises two main components: HAWK, the portion that teaches reading and writing skills, and Kokopelli’s World, the addition to HAWK that introduces programming instruction. Kokopelli’s World is a novel blocks-based coding environment designed to cater to the needs of dyslexic students. The thesis also presents two user studies that explore the relationship between programming and dyslexia. Results suggest that different measures of dyslexia may have different correlation with programming success. The thesis also presents detailed coding experiences of two dyslexic students and discusses them in terms of a newly constructed set of recurring programming patterns. These studies have identified a set of hypotheses about how dyslexic students relate to computer programming that can help structure future research on programming by dyslexic children.