ASL Aspire Makes STEM Accessible to Deaf Students and Educators with a Game-Based Learning Platform

University of Illinois startup, ASL Aspire, is reshaping and standardizing the STEM educational landscape for deaf students across North America. ASL Aspire is an online educational platform that teaches STEM education for K-12 deaf students and their teachers. In the United States, there are an estimated 308,648 deaf or hard of hearing children between the ages of 5 and 17, according to the National Association of Deaf organization.

The startup is empowering deaf students with tools and resources necessary to thrive in STEM fields and helping teachers with an innovative solution to enhance classroom instruction.

What Inspired ASL Aspire?

Bioengineering alumna Mona Jawad began working on the ASL Aspire startup idea in 2021 with Ayesha Kazi, a Master of Computer Science student and co-founder.

Mona Jawad, co-founder of ASL Aspire, says, “I have always loved teaching, and education holds deep value for me. During college, I had the opportunity to be part of a project at the Department of Speech and Hearing Science. I was surrounded by the dialogue of the deaf community, and sign language always fascinated me. When the pandemic struck, I was mentoring high school students and was involved in STEM camps on campus. The absence of deaf students in STEM activities struck me. I interviewed several educators who instructed deaf students, and they shared that these students lacked the STEM vocabulary to express their ideas effectively in class, which led to struggles and missed opportunities. I firmly believe that a solid grasp of STEM concepts can unlock countless opportunities for young minds. Unfortunately, many of these deaf students didn’t even have the language to articulate themselves. Fueled by this critical gap in deaf education, Ayesha and I founded ASL Aspire in January 2021 to empower deaf students in the field of STEM.”

In 2021, the team won the Health Make-a-Thon hosted by the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. In 2022, the team received the GIANT (Grassroots Initiatives to Address Needs Together) phase I grant, followed by the phase II grant in 2023 from the IDEA Institute at The Grainger College of Engineering, which helped accelerate the idea. In 2022, the ASL Aspire team also tied for the third-place prize in the Cozad New Venture Challenge with a $5,000 investment, in addition to other Cozad prizes like the $1,000 AWARE prize from The Grainger College of Engineering and the $500 Audience Choice Award.

Ayesha Kazi says, “We started as a research project, and it was during Cozad that we switched from a research project to a company. We incorporated right after we won the top placement prizes in Cozad and started getting more funding. While we were on campus, we also leveraged entrepreneurial resources like the Illinois I-Corps program and iVenture Accelerator at the Gies College of Business.”

What Problem is ASL Aspire Solving?

There are many American Sign Language (ASL) learning apps in the market, but not many are curriculum based and focused on STEM. There are also STEM dictionaries for ASL and some STEM videos on the internet. The deaf education curriculum is not standardized, and deaf educators rely on DIY types of curricula. ASL Aspire is filling this gap by offering a standardized, STEM-based curriculum for deaf education that is interactive and fun.

According to ASL Aspire, some educators make their own instructional videos for students. Mona says, “We interviewed a teacher who mentioned that she had cycled through seven different assessments trying to find the right one. Our platform compiles research-backed, good curriculum standards in one place where kids can be playing the games and not even realizing they are learning, but the teachers are getting the data they need to be able to tell that the kids are meeting the reading and writing standards.”

She adds, “We got the idea of making the platform game-based from the teachers who mentioned that the favorite part of the day for the school kids was when they got time to play Kahoot or other games.”

ASL Aspire’s game-based learning resources are integrated with the Next Generation Science Standards, a commonly used K-12 curriculum framework. The platform’s alignment with Next Generation Science Standards ensures a curriculum that is both relevant and accessible, addressing the critical gaps in deaf education. ASL Aspire leverages the expertise of three deaf scientists on board to guide the development of educational content offered on the platform.

Impact

Mona explains that ASL Aspire is designed to counteract the early language barriers deaf students often encounter, creating a vibrant, interactive learning space through their games, even if such an environment is lacking in their immediate physical surroundings. The platform has already engaged over 300 students in its pilot phase and is gearing up for a wider launch across multiple school districts.

Sharing insights from their school visits, Mona notes, “We frequently meet deaf students who consider dropping out because they rarely see others like themselves. With 90% of deaf students having hearing parents, these students struggle to find role models they can relate to, lacking visible deaf figures in mainstream media. This makes envisioning a successful future challenging for them. To address this, we include deaf scientists in our school visits, allowing students to engage with professionals who have excelled in their fields. These scientists contribute significantly to our curriculum.”

She adds, “One of the biggest challenges we face as a team is learning how to be a good ally to the deaf community and understanding that as hearing individuals, no matter how good our intentions are, ASL content can’t come from us. The value of this idea and the ownership of this idea is for and to the deaf community.”

ASL Aspire is in the beta testing phase and as it continues to grow and evolve, it aims to expand its current network of schools in the United States and Canada. It is also planning on launching an iOS version of the platform soon.