RDE-DEI: Enhancing Geology, Chemistry, Biology and Physics Laboratory and Field Experiences for Students with Visual and Physical Disabilities

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Laboratory classes and field experiences in the sciences pose particular obstacles for studentswith disabilities. Most higher education institutions respond to these obstacles by providingindividual accommodations to students. While these individual accommodations are valuable inaddressing the particular needs of each individual student, in this proposal we seek to maketransformations to the laboratory environment and to field experiences that will help improvelearning for all students with visual and physical disabilities.This approach has been to assemble a team including science faculty who teach laboratory andfield experience courses in Biology, Chemistry, Geology and Physics, special education faculty,staff from the Disability Services office, and students with disabilities to work together inidentifying aspects of the lab environment and field experiences which can be altered to enhancestudent learning. Once improvements to the experiments and field work have been developed, the projectwill introduce these changes into our introductory classes. In the classroom the project will examine theimpact of the changes on both accommodation of disabilities and on student learning. Both students with disabilities and some non-disabled students will perform experiments using the modified equipment. Changes in their understanding of content, attitude development and skill mastery will be assessed. By examining both students with and without disabilities, we seek to determine the impact on student learning in general as well as on accommodating students with disabilities. The approach should yield results which will be of interest to the academic community as a whole.