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

实验课程和科学领域的实地经验对残疾学生构成了特别的障碍。大多数高等教育机构通过为学生提供个性化住宿来应对这些障碍。虽然这些个性化的住宿在解决每个学生的特殊需求方面是有价值的，但在本提案中，我们寻求对实验室环境和现场体验进行改造，以帮助改善所有有视觉和身体残疾的学生的学习。这种方法是组建一个团队，包括教授生物学、化学、地质学和物理学的实验室和实地经验课程的科学教师、特殊教育教师、残疾服务办公室的工作人员和残疾学生，共同确定实验室环境和实地经验的各个方面，这些方面可以改变，以增强学生的学习。一旦实验和实地工作得到改进，该项目将把这些改进引入我们的入门课程。在课堂上，该项目将检查这些变化对残疾和学生学习的影响。残疾学生和一些非残疾学生将使用改进的设备进行实验。他们对内容的理解、态度发展和技能掌握的变化将被评估。通过检查有残疾和没有残疾的学生，我们试图确定对学生学习的总体影响，以及对残疾学生的适应。这种方法应该会产生整个学术界感兴趣的结果。

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.