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

实验室课程和科学领域的实地经验给残疾学生带来了特别的障碍。大多数高等教育机构通过为学生提供个人住宿来应对这些障碍。虽然这些单独的设施对满足每个学生的特殊需求很有价值，但在这项建议中，我们寻求对实验室环境和现场经验进行改造，以帮助所有有视觉和物理障碍的学生提高学习能力。这种方法一直是组建一个团队，包括教授生物、化学、地质和物理实验室和现场经验课程的理科教师、特殊教育人员、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现场经验的方面，可以改变以促进祖先的学习。一旦对实验和实地工作进行了改进，该项目将把这些变化引入我们的入门课程。在课堂上，该项目将考察这些变化对残疾人士适应能力和学生学习的影响。残疾学生和一些非残疾学生都将使用改装后的设备进行实验。将评估他们在内容理解、态度发展和技能掌握方面的变化。通过检查残疾学生和非残疾学生，我们试图确定对一般学生学习的影响以及对残疾学生收容的影响。这种方法应该产生整个学术界都感兴趣的结果。

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.