RDE-FRI: Improving Access to STEM for Community College Students with Disabilities in Universally Designed Learning Communities

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The project RDE-FRI: Improving Access to STEM for Community College Students with Disabilities in Universally Designed Learning Communities is a 36-month, $300,000 dollar award funded by the Research in Disabilities Education (RDE) program''s Focused Research Initiatives (FRI) track. The primary goal of this project is to create and test the effectiveness of a student learning community model for community college students with disabilities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Building on earlier work funded by NSF (HRD-0004326, DRL-0618182) and the U.S. Education Department (P333A020021) this experienced project team is placing students with disabilities in a universally designed STEM learning community (UDLC) at Springfield Technical Community College, Greenfield Community College and Quinsigamond Community College, in order to study the impact of the UDLC on student academic performance, retention and confidence to be successful in STEM. The UDLCs include a group of students who are enrolled in a STEM-specific college success course and a STEM academic course. Over the three (3) years of this project there will be approximately 65 students with disabilities and 510 students without disabilities in two control groups, and a comparison will be made between the control group subjects and approximately 50 students with disabilities and 65 students without disabilities who will receive the UDLC intervention as part of their experimental group status. The project addresses one (1) of the FRI track goals: To investigate effective instructional methods and practices for people with disabilities in STEM. The project includes a formative and summative project evaluation process conducted by a team from the University of Massachusetts''s Donahue Institute, as well as plans to create and publish the "Best Practices Electronic STEM Study and Learning Guidebook" and the "Guide for Developing a UDL STEM College Success Course." The project team is leveraging resources with other projects, including the NSF-funded National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (DUE-0302548) and the RDE-funded EAST Regional Alliance at the University of Southern Maine (HRD-0333316), to provide web-based resources for applying universal design learning to community college STEM courses so that students with disabilities can fully participate in STEM education.