Collaborative Research: BPE Track 2: Disability DCL - Capturing Narratives that Characterize Neurodivergent Strengths and Weaknesses

合作研究：BPE 轨道 2：残疾 DCL - 捕捉表征神经分歧优势和劣势的叙述

• 批准号: 2306831
• 负责人: Catherine Spence
• 金额: $ 2.65万
• 依托单位: Minnesota State University, Mankato
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-15 至 2026-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2306831&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; BPE; Track; Disability

Neurodivergent (e.g., ADHD, autistic, bipolar) students bring desired characteristics such as attention to detail, creativity, and unique spatial skills to engineering, yet they are more likely to drop out of college due to different barriers and challenges. Empowering neurodivergent participation in engineering by understanding both the strengths and challenges faced will significantly benefit the generation of creative and innovative solutions needed to solve complex global and societal problems. This National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Engineering collaborative project at Utah State University and Minnesota State University will approach neurodiversity in engineering by engaging with the neurodivergent community on social media (e.g., Instagram, TikTok) to understand their strengths and challenges. Social media is a vast information source where communities share their lived experiences and build community, and more specifically, the neurodivergent presence online expanded after the COVID-19 quarantine. Neurodivergent people share their lived experiences and interact with one another to generate shared meaning resulting in new emancipatory language that describe their experiences and emancipate themselves from deficit-based framing and stereotypes. Such language embraces both strengths and challenges faced by neurodivergent people which can be leveraged in engineering education to support neurodivergent students. By engaging with neurodivergent communities, trust can be built between researchers and neurodivergent people to work together to develop better learning accommodations and resources. Further, this language can be informative to higher education, for example, to write policy and develop learning accommodations that represent and potentially increase participation and degree completion of neurodivergent students. In engineering, neurodivergent students will share their stories in engineering to share their lived experiences such as successes and offer coping mechanisms to manage challenges. These stories will be shared publicly to encourage other neurodivergent students in their studies and inform peers and faculty about neurodivergence in engineering. This mixed-methods, collaborative project will identify emancipatory language that describe the strengths and challenges of neurodivergent students in engineering (neurodivergent refers to people who think, function, and behave significantly different from societal “norms,” e.g., ADHD, autism, schizophrenia). This project will first implement social media analytics to engage with and identify emancipatory language in the public neurodivergent community. Social media platforms (e.g., TikTok, Instagram, Twitter) will be scraped for neurodivergent related content and analyzed using natural language processing techniques (latent Dirichlet allocation and sentiment analysis). This method will reveal common language associated with neurodivergent strengths and challenges. Findings will then be used to develop a strengths and challenges interview protocol for the next phase. The next phase will consist of two narrative inquiries. The first inquiry will be longitudinal where 24 neurodivergent engineering students at Utah State University will be interviewed over a semester to develop semester long narratives. The second inquiry will leverage social media to recruit neurodivergent engineering students across the nation to develop a variety of narratives. Expected outcomes will include building trust between neurodivergent and research communities, developing a lexicon of words to describe and conceptualize neurodivergence in engineering, demonstrating social media analytics and natural language processing methods in engineering education research, and developing a resource and narrative depository for neurodivergent engineering students and engineering faculty.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

神经发散性（例如，注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）、自闭症、躁郁症）学生为工程带来了所需的特征，如对细节的关注、创造力和独特的空间技能，但由于不同的障碍和挑战，他们更有可能从大学辍学。通过了解所面临的优势和挑战，使神经分歧者参与工程，将大大有利于产生解决复杂的全球和社会问题所需的创造性和创新性解决方案。这个国家科学基金会在犹他州州立大学和明尼苏达州州立大学的扩大参与工程合作项目将通过与社交媒体上的神经分歧社区（例如，Instagram、TikTok）了解自己的优势和挑战。社交媒体是一个巨大的信息来源，社区分享他们的生活经验并建立社区，更具体地说，在COVID-19隔离后，神经分歧者在网上的存在扩大了。神经分歧者分享他们的生活经验，并与彼此互动，以产生共同的意义，从而产生新的解放语言，描述他们的经验，并将自己从基于缺陷的框架和刻板印象中解放出来。这样的语言包含了神经分歧者所面临的优势和挑战，可以在工程教育中利用这些优势和挑战来支持神经分歧者的学生。通过与neurodivergent社区的互动，研究人员和neurodivergent人员之间可以建立信任，共同开发更好的学习环境和资源。此外，这种语言可以为高等教育提供信息，例如，编写政策和开发学习适应，代表并可能增加神经分歧学生的参与和学位完成。在工程学方面，neurodivergent学生将分享他们在工程学方面的故事，分享他们的生活经验，如成功，并提供应对挑战的机制。这些故事将公开分享，以鼓励其他neurodiversity学生在他们的研究，并告知同行和教师neurodiversity在工程。这个混合方法，协作项目将确定解放语言，描述neurodivergent学生在工程学中的优势和挑战（neurodivergent是指那些思考，功能和行为与社会“规范”显著不同的人，例如，ADHD、自闭症、精神分裂症）。该项目将首先实施社交媒体分析，以参与并识别公共neurodivergent社区中的解放语言。社交媒体平台（例如，TikTok、Instagram、Twitter）将被抓取神经发散相关内容，并使用自然语言处理技术（潜在狄利克雷分配和情感分析）进行分析。这种方法将揭示与神经分歧的优势和挑战相关的共同语言。调查结果将用于制定下一阶段的优势和挑战访谈协议。下一阶段将包括两个叙述性调查。第一次调查将是纵向的，其中犹他州州立大学的24名神经发散工程专业的学生将在一个学期内接受采访，以发展一个学期的叙述。第二项调查将利用社交媒体在全国范围内招募神经发散工程专业的学生，以发展各种各样的叙述。预期成果将包括建立neurodiversal和研究社区之间的信任，开发词汇来描述和概念化工程中的neurodiversal，展示工程教育研究中的社交媒体分析和自然语言处理方法，并为神经分歧工程专业的学生和工程系教师开发一个资源和叙述性的储藏室。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来提供支持。